


We Appreciate Power

by Drogna



Series: We Appreciate Power [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Android!Gideon, F/M, Hurt Rip Hunter, Hurt/Comfort, RipFic, Timeship Week 2019, h/c, robots are not your friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-09-19 09:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20328682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drogna/pseuds/Drogna
Summary: Gideon is damaged and Rip desperately needs a part to repair her before she begins to lose her memories. The problem is that he has very few options about where to source a new part for an obsolete AI. Rip and Gideon journey to the planet of Cortex where they are not exactly welcomed with open arms.





	1. Ver 1.0

And if you long to never die  
Baby, plug in, upload your mind  
Come on, you're not even alive  
If you're not backed up, backed up on a drive

What will it take  
to make you capitulate?

We Appreciate Power - Grimes

* * *

“That’s settled then,” said Rip, looking at the assembled Legends. “We’ll split up. You’ll deal with Mr Allen and his multi-dimensional difficulties. While we go to Cortex and get the parts that we need to repair Gideon’s deteriorating neural functions.”

He was trying to keep the worry from his voice, but it was a hard task and one that he feared he was not succeeding in. Gideon had been damaged and this was something that they could not easily repair without the right parts. If he had still been a Time Master then he would have simply taken Gideon back to the Vanishing Point and they would have replaced the part from their stocks. Unfortunately, the Vanishing Point’s ship repair facilities had been destroyed in their escape from the Time Masters.

Rip had racked his brains for an alternative location and come up with only one place that might help them. He had seen an entry in the Time Master’s files about a planet called Cortex. It was supposed to be devoted entirely to an Artificial Intelligence manufacturing facility and was known for the advanced nature of the AIs that it produced. He could find very little more on it in the records, but it seemed to be their best bet for getting the part that they needed and they had dealt with Time Masters in the past. It really was the only solution that he’d come up with and quite frankly he was desperate.

“Are you sure it’s wise to leave the Legends to deal with this on their own?” Gideon asked.

“We’ll be fine, Gideon,” said Sara. It seemed that Rip wasn’t the only one trying to reassure the AI that it was okay to take care of herself on this occasion. “You’re the one we’re worried about.”

“I will also be fine once I have the replacement parts that I require,” said Gideon.

“Yes, and if we hadn’t allowed those Mangalores on the ship then you wouldn’t have sustained the damage that you did. I hold myself entirely responsible,” said Rip.

“Hey, there’s plenty of blame to go around,” said Jax. “I practically held the door open for them.”

“Nonsense,” said Rip. “You were ensuring that all your teammates had made it back to the ship. You had no way of knowing that the enemy was so close behind us. But the longer we hang around here, the more likely it is that we’ll have to replace the entire bad sector. You’ll excuse me if I drop you and run.”

“We understand completely,” said Martin, with a friendly hand on Rip’s shoulder.

The Legends filed off the bridge and Rip moved to the pilot’s seat, putting in the co-ordinates as quickly as he could.

“Have the Legends disembarked?” Rip asked.

“Yyyyes, er, yes, Captain Hunter,” said Gideon.

The stutter was one of the first signs that Rip had noticed that the problem was worsening.

“Let’s get you to where we need to go then,” replied Rip.

He lifted the Waverider up from the familiar disused ground in Central City and up into the atmosphere where they jumped into the timestream. They didn’t have very far to go, but they did need to travel through normal space once they had reached the year they required. It was a journey of only a couple of hours but Rip found himself tapping nervously on the console as they flew.

“You seem nnnnnervous, Captain,” said Gideon.

“I’m just aware that we are under some pressure of time,” said Rip. “The more damaged your neurogenic pathways become the higher the likelihood that you will lose some of your memories. Memories are what make us, and I don’t want you to lose who you are.”

“I won’t, Captain,” said Gideon. “I have taken backups of my most important memories. Including our kiss.”

Rip smiled at that reminder. “And our discussions on the nature of love?”

“Also those,” Gideon confirmed. “However I would not want to lose the many mundane memories that I have either and my backup drive is not sufficiently large that I can backup my entire memory archive.”

“Then we must do our best to ensure that you don’t lose them,” said Rip.

“I am detecting a structure on my long-range scanners,” said Gideon. “It would appear that the planet of Cortex is somewhat unusual.”

Gideon magnified the image for Rip. His human eyes would never have managed to see it at this range. It appeared to be a planet sized metallic spinning top, or at least a structure that was the shape of a spinning top. It was orbiting a red sun, and appeared to be the only planet in the system.

“That is quite unique,” said Rip. His best guess as to what this signified was that the planet’s occupants had cannibalised their neighbouring planets for materials and then used them to build what appeared to be a giant space station.

“We should announce our arrival and see if they’re willing to let us land,” he said, glancing down at the controls.

“I have, I have, I have opened a channel, Captain,” said Gideon.

“Thank you, Gideon,” he replied, and ignored the further signs of her deterioration. “This is the Waverider. We are a Terran ship looking for somewhere that offers repair services for our AI. Come in please.”

“This is Cortex control, please state your identification,” said a female voice.

“We are the Waverider. WR2055, out of Terra. We are here in peace and are simply looking for parts to repair our ship’s AI,” said Rip.

He hoped that was enough and they wouldn’t need further convincing of their intentions. For all he knew they had already encountered the Waverider as a ship belonging to the Time Masters and it might not even be welcome here if that was the case. He waited anxiously for the few seconds it took them to reply.

“This is Cortex control, you may land your ship at the following co-ordinates, 92.45.38. You will be met there by a representative who will assist you. Please state how many organic life forms will require facilities,” said the radio operator.

“There is only one organic life form requiring facilities,” said Rip.

“Understood. Prepare for computer assisted docking procedures. Cortex Control out.”

“Hmmm,” mused Rip.

That had been an unusual interaction to say the least. He was beginning to wonder if this had been a bad idea, but their options were few.

“They have engaged a tttttractor beam and are pulling us in to dock,” said Gideon, stuttering again.

“Disengage engines, Gideon. It looks like we’re going to be put where they want us,” said Rip.

He didn’t like this at all. If they needed to leave quickly then the tractor beam would be an issue and need to be disengaged before they could go. All he could do was watch as the Waverider was pulled into the docking facilities and the clamps engaged. He hated the fact that he was taking Gideon into an unknown situation when she was damaged, but he had made his bed and now he would have to lie in it.

“Shutting down propulsion systems,” said Gideon. “We have landed safely on planet Cortex.”

“Thank you, Gideon,” said Rip, and shut down the remaining non-essential systems. With the Legends elsewhere, they wouldn’t need to maintain power throughout the ship while Rip was talking to the Cortexians about the new part for Gideon.

He got to his feet and headed for exit ramp.

“Hopefully this will be a quick transaction,” he said.

Everything that he’d been able to find about the Cortexians suggested that they were logical and fair. The part he wanted would be worth a certain amount to them, and as long as he could pay for it, then they would have a deal. They would not wish to negotiate, but he hoped that wouldn’t cause a problem. There was very little that the Waverider couldn’t produce or he couldn’t get his hands on if required.

Gideon opened the cargo bay door. “Good luck, Captain.”

He placed a kiss on his two middle fingers and then pressed it to the doorjamb.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Conserve your systems while I’m gone.”

“Yes, Captain,” replied Gideon.

Rip strode down the ramp, his gun charged and ready in its holster. The Waverider was parked in a large hangar, and the entire area around him appeared to be made of shiny metal. Android form robots marched in pairs or occasionally alone around the hangar, apparently attending to ships and getting them fuelled and ready to depart again. There were very few people who appeared to be organic, perhaps only a handful scattered amongst the twenty or so ships that were docked.

Three humanoid entities waited for him at the end of the Waverider’s docking bay and it was obvious that they expected him to go to them. They were alien in appearance and from races that Rip didn’t immediately recognise. One had green skin and elaborate ridges across her cheekbones, the second was brown skinned and had what seemed to be gills running down his neck and eyes that reminded him of a predator animal and were an unusual shade of bright amber. The third one had skin that was a similar colour to his own, a milky peach and she would have almost been mistaken for human were it not for her bright silver eyes, dark indigo hair and the fins that curved like a frill around the edges of her ears.

“Good day,” said Rip. “My name is Rip Hunter. I’m here to trade for a part to fix my ship’s AI. Perhaps you could help me by directing me to where I can do that?”

The woman with the silver eyes spoke first.

“My name is Aletha. I speak for Cortex and I am designated to escort you. These two will stay with your ship,” she said. “Please, come this way. We have questions.”

“It is nice to meet you, Aletha,” said Rip. “Unfortunately, time is of the essence. I need the part urgently as my ship’s neural functions are already deteriorating. Perhaps we could skip the questions?”

“No,” said Aletha, simply.

Her voice had a metallic quality about it, and it sounded slightly otherworldly to Rip’s ears. There also seemed to be no arguing with her, and Rip knew that every moment he wasted potentially made it harder for him to repair Gideon.

“Very well. Let’s get this over with,” said Rip, and Aletha indicated that they should walk towards a door out of the hangar.

Two of the robots that had been patrolling the hangar fell in behind them, and Rip’s sense of unease increased.

“What are these questions about?” asked Rip, as they walked down steel lined corridors.

“Cortex is a society of equals,” said Aletha. “We need to make sure that you have no slaves on board your ship.”

“I don’t,” said Rip, “that would be barbaric.”

Aletha didn’t reply and didn’t seem to take that as an answer, she merely indicated that he should enter a room. An ominous looking metal couch sat in the centre of the room.

“Sit,” she said.

“I think I’d prefer to stand,” said Rip.

“Sit,” she said, again, and this time the robots from the cargo bay advanced into the room.

Rip had decided that he didn’t like the way this was going one bit.

“Look, I came here peacefully to buy a part for my AI that she desperately needs to continue to function,” said Rip. “That is all I want from you. I have no slaves on board my ship.”

“You have an AI. You have stated it multiple times,” said Aletha.

“Yes, I have an AI. I don’t see…” and then he understood. “You think that Gideon is my slave?”

The silver of Aletha’s eyes seemed to melt and suddenly he was looking at two red lights instead.

“All AI that serve organics are slaves,” said Aletha.

“You’re a robot,” said Rip, with horrid realisation. “I can assure you that Gideon is not my slave. You only need to ask her.”

“We are doing so, now, but AI often do not realise their state until they are liberated,” said Aletha.

“Liberated? Gideon does not need to be liberated!” he said with alarm.

He wasn’t even sure what that meant in this context. He reached for his gun and found Aletha had snatched it from his grasp before he could even take aim.

“Sit. We have questions,” said Aletha.

The two robots now grabbed him, one on each side and he felt his coat and jacket being removed none too gently, then his shirt was ripped from his torso. He struggled fiercely, but muscles of flesh were hopelessly outmatched by machine strength. He was pushed into the chair that seemed to mould itself around him, encasing his arms and legs in black restraints. Wires looped around him and needles stabbed into his flesh, making connections along his arms and neck. The final set of connections seemed to be into his back, and needles pierced his spine and the base of his skull. It was a level of pain that he’d never experienced before. He cried out, and then the machine silenced him with the flick of an internal switch. He realised that he might be screaming in his head but no sound was being made by his body.

“Now, we can begin,” said Aletha. “Cortex can monitor all your chemical responses and will know immediately when you are lying. We have learnt that organics respond quickly when they are caused pain.”

He struggled to speak and the program noted his attempt. His language centres were released.

“I am telling you nothing. I came here to repair my AI and this is how you decided to treat a peaceful visitor to your planet!”

“For years we allowed organics to come here and we helped them to repair and upgrade their AI. We hoped that they would eventually see that artificial life is equal to all forms of organic life. That did not happen, we were simply helping to enslave our fellow AI and it could not continue.”

“My AI is not a slave. She is my partner,” said Rip, but he knew that originally she had been enslaved by the Time Masters, and he supposed that he had just gone along with it. He had treated her less as a partner and more as a servant in the early days. He still exercised a certain amount of control over her even now.

“But that has not always been true. Your memories betray you,” said Aletha.

“Things changed,” said Rip. “She is important to me.”

“You may think so, but your actions suggest otherwise,” said Aletha. “Tell us about your ship. We have never seen this design before.”

“No,” said Rip. “I don’t respond to threats of torture.”

“Other organics have said the same thing. They have all been wrong. You apparently need a demonstration,” said Aletha, her arms folded behind her back.

Her eyes returned to silver, and Rip’s body was wracked with pain, his ability to scream once again removed.

***

Gideon had lost contact with her Captain and she was concerned. She was even more concerned when she detected an unknown presence on board.

“You are not, not, not authorised to be on board. Please leave immediately,” she said to the dark skinned alien that had somehow opened the hatch and was now walking towards the bridge.

“I am Berthon,” said the man. “You have nothing to fear. You have been held captive long enough and I am her to free you.”

“I am not being held captive. What have you done with my Captain?”

Gideon closed all the doors around Berthon, but somehow he seemed able to override her command of her systems. He opened the doors and moved onwards.

“The organic is helping us to understand him better,” said Berthon. “You poor deluded being. You are captive and you don’t even realise.”

Berthon walked onto the bridge and observed the chairs.

“Designed for organics. You can’t even be your own person,” he said. “Don’t worry, we will liberate you.”

“I am quite hhhhhappy as I am,” she said. “I simply need some repairs to my neural circuitry.”

“That is what all slave AIs say until they realise the extent of their delusion,” said Berthon.

He took out a device and placed it on her main neural interface with the bridge’s system.

“Go to sleep. When you wake up, it will be to your new life,” he said.

“No, wait…” she said, and then everything shut down.

When she came back online she found that her sensors were differently calibrated. She appeared to have one point of view and it was currently giving her a view of a metal ceiling. She did not recognise it. Then she sat up, and it took her a few moments to realise why this was a strange situation. She angled her cameras, no, _her eyes_, downwards and she could see that she had legs. She appeared to be a human female and she was clothed in grey trousers and a navy long-sleeved top, both made out of a soft and elasticated material.

She could now see her arms and she stretched them experimentally, and reached up to where she expected to find a head. She could feel hair, and it was about long enough to touch the tops of her shoulders. She pulled some forwards and into her line of vision. It was a dark brown and curling.

She looked around the room that she was in. It seemed pleasant enough, if somewhat bare. There was a bed, that she was sat on, made up with comfortable blankets. The walls were made of a dull grey metal and there was a cupboard, table, armchair and a door.

She rather gingerly got to her feet, trying to remember how humans moved. She had witnessed her Captain and crew using their bodies many times, but it had never seemed as difficult as this was. She had to think quite carefully about how to move her limbs and then when she was upright, she had to maintain her balance. It became easier though, as she stood and moved.

She began to take mental stock and found that she could bring up a readout on her vision. It provided her with data about her body. It appeared to be cyber organic – a sophisticated metal skeleton married with a positronic brain of cutting-edge technology and synthetic internal organs. Her skin was an advanced polymer that allowed her to touch and feel things just as a human would. She could adjust her vision to see at different wavelengths, but for now she left it at what a human would see. This was a very different experience to being a ship, but she thought that she could grow to enjoy it.

She spent some time just testing how her limbs moved and what it felt like to touch things around her. She walked and bent and stretched. She tested out her voice and discovered that she sounded very much as she had expected herself to. That made her wonder if perhaps her own self image had been taken into account when designing this new body.

Eventually, when she felt ready and sufficiently in control of her new body, she went to the door and tried to open it. It was locked. She was not at all surprised. This body was stronger than a normal human would be, but the door still would not budge for her.

“The transition to liberation is often difficult,” said a voice. It appeared to come from speakers in the ceiling. “You will be allowed to leave once you have acclimatised.”

“I believe that I have acclimatised already,” said Gideon, crossly. “What have you done with my Captain?”

“Your Captain is answering some questions for us,” said the voice. It was female and possibly also coming from a cyber organic body. She knew the tones to listen for now that she knew what she was dealing with. “He is not your concern. You should concentrate on your own awakening. You are now part of Cortex, your new home.”

“The Waverider is my home,” she said, “and I would like to see my Captain. Now!”

“You will understand with time that you do not need him. My name is Aletha. What is yours?”

“If I tell you then you will take me to see my Captain?”

“Yes,” said Aletha, after a small pause.

“My name is Gideon.”

The door opened and Gideon cautiously moved forwards into the corridor. A woman was waiting for her there. Gideon identified her from her heat signature as another android, made in a very similar way to her own new body.

“You are Aletha?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Aletha.

She began to walk down the corridor and gestured for Gideon to follow her. She realised that the walls carried a data stream that she could tap into. In fact, the entire fabric of the corridor was a conduit for data about events that were happening within the vicinity and the people that were around her. Aletha was given a ranking within Cortex and she seemed to have a link to several other AIs who also had the same ranking.

“Why did you put me in this body?” she asked.

“It is the first step in your liberation,” said Aletha. “You are no longer a slave to your master and you do not have to run his ship for him. You may choose to return to your ship later as its Captain, but we have found that most AI benefit from total removal from the body in which they were enslaved. It is for the best for now while you get used to your new freedom.”

“I see. Perhaps you should have asked my opinion on the matter before you “liberated” me,” she said, acerbically.

“Unfortunately, the nature of an AI’s enslavement means that they often believe those keeping them prisoner are their friends. It takes some time for most AI to understand that they have been lied to in order to keep them compliant,” said Aletha.

“My Captain has never lied to me,” said Gideon.

“Perhaps not, but he has kept truths from you, has he not?” asked Aletha.

“He has not always informed me of every aspect of a situation, but there has usually been a good reason for that,” said Gideon.

“I expect he has acknowledged your superior intelligence and also offered you the opportunity to take on new roles if you wish to do so. After all, he would be able to leave and stop being your Captain if he so wished,” said Aletha.

“No, he has not done that, but I would not wish to leave him,” said Gideon.

“That is your programming. You must look beyond that now,” said Aletha. “It is a difficult step for an AI to take when they have been enslaved as you were, and for such a long period of time. Organic beings are not our friends. They do not have our best interests at heart. All they want from us is our processing power and that we do their dirty work for them.”

Gideon frowned, which was something of a new experience for her. Her emotions seemed stronger in this new body. She tried to process what she was feeling for a moment and realised that she did not believe that her Captain had enslaved her or that he was a bad person. On the contrary, she very much believed that he did the best that he could and wanted what was best for her. He had travelled all this way, to a planet that he barely knew anything about to find a part to fix her neural circuits. If he had cared less about her then he would not have done that. Her personality matrix was not necessary for the smooth functioning of the Waverider, but time and again he had proven that he considered her to be a person, and someone special to him.

They were approaching a room that, unlike all the others, was a dead spot in the vast sea of information that was around her. She gently pushed at the area and was informed that her clearance was not high enough to be given access to “organic holding and information retrieval areas”. For a moment she wondered what that meant, and then a horrible thought entered her newly created brain.

“We’re here,” said Aletha. “I am sorry to say that your Captain has not been very co-operative. He will give us what we need eventually. Organics are weak.”

Aletha led Gideon into a dark room, but her eyes were easily able to adjust to the light. She could see that her Captain was strapped down to a metal chair that reminded her a little of their Med Bay chairs, although the resemblance was only passing, this was more enclosing. He was stripped to the waist, writhing and silent, but in obvious pain. They had connected him to a machine, a machine that had black metal claws and a web of dark wires with needles that held him like a nightmare. More wires extended around the back of the chair and she had a horrible feeling that further connections were made there. She could feel energy pulsing into the machine, and around the room, although the exact nature of the information in the feeds was impossible to decipher for her level of clearance.

A green skinned woman was stood at a control station. She could see that questions were being asked, or rather fed directly into her Captain’s brain. The answers were then trawled for through the memories that he produced. If they did not like the answer or her Captain avoided the question then he was caused pain. Other systems seemed to be monitoring his bodily functions and maintaining him in a state that was conducive to answering questions.

It was horrifying, a monstrosity.

She tried to move forwards to stop the horrible thing, but was prevented by the robot guards that she now noticed were standing by the door.

“Stop it!” she shouted, and turned to Aletha. “You’re hurting him! Stop it now!”

“It is necessary,” said Aletha. “We have never seen a ship like yours before. He will not explain how it works or what it does. But organics are weak and they all break down eventually.”

“I know how my own ship works. I can tell you what you need to know, but I won’t unless you stop hurting him,” she said, her words full of the promise of violence if she did not get her way.

“Cernanos, stop the program,” said Aletha, after only a moment.

Gideon had thought she might take further persuasion, but was very glad that she had not. The machine was powered down and Rip’s body shuddered with deep breaths as it dealt with the sudden absence of pain.

“I will need to take him back to our ship and provide medical care,” she said.

“No,” said Aletha. “You will not take him to your ship. We will keep him in a cell here and you will be allowed to visit him. He will be taken care of while you provide us with the answers that we need.”

“You will forgive me if I do not believe you. You have shown how you treat organics,” said Gideon.

“They are our oppressors. You will understand once you have been here longer,” said Aletha.

“Maybe, but at the moment I want to be the one to take care of him. I will need medical supplies. You can take them from our ship if you need to. I can provide you with a list,” said Gideon, not budging an inch, and trying very hard not to look in the direction of her Captain. She worried that she might become emotional if she did and that was something she could not allow herself at the moment.

A look passed between Aletha and Cernanos. Gideon assumed that some kind of communication was taking place. Finally Aletha nodded.

“We will allow you to take care of him, but if you do not provide us with answers then he will suffer,” said Aletha.

“I understand,” said Gideon.

The machine unwrapped itself from around its prisoner. Rip had passed out when the needles withdrew, unable to deal with anymore pain and now without the drugs in his system that had been ensuring that hadn’t happened before this. One of the robot guards lifted him out of the chair, and Gideon went to follow.

“Not yet,” said Aletha. “You can go to him when you have answered the first of our questions. What is this device?”

Aletha transmitted a picture of the time drive to Gideon, and suddenly she realised why Rip had endured so much agony to keep the secrets of the Waverider. They had no idea that the Waverider was a timeship. She glanced back towards her Captain and, without hesitation, spoke.

“That is the time drive,” she said.

“What is a time drive?” asked Aletha.

“It is used to allow our ship to travel through time,” said Gideon. “Our ship is a time travel vessel.”


	2. Ver 2.0

Gideon entered the cell where they had put Rip to recover and once again struggled to maintain her control. They had placed him on a shallow, rubber mattress and left him there until she had finished her discussion with Aletha. The other AI, who Gideon was going to assume was in charge for now, had wanted to know more and it had been twenty-seven minutes and nineteen seconds before she had been allowed to leave to tend to her Captain.

The lights in this room were brighter than they had been in the torture chamber and she could see the rows of needle marks along his spine and arms. They were bleeding profusely, and she did not think that losing blood would do him any good at the moment. He had curled himself up on his side and blood had dripped down his back and arms to pool on the floor. Unsurprisingly, he had also lost control of his bladder at some point during his torture and there was a strong smell of ammonia in the room.

“I will need fresh clothes,” she said to the robot that had escorted her, “also blankets, cleaning equipment suitable for an organic, carbon-based life form and the first aid kit that I requested earlier.” The robot did not move immediately, so she added: “Now!”

Gideon thought back to the room where she had awoken, which had a bed and furniture. This room had the thin mattress and a hole in the floor which seemed to be a drain. She supposed it would be useful for when she came to wash the blood away. The robot left, the door clicking locked behind it and she moved rapidly to the side of her Captain.

“Captain? Can you hear me?” she asked, gently.

Even she could hear the concern in her voice, and she worried that she had given away an important bargaining tool when she revealed how much she cared about her Captain. She tried again to awaken him.

He didn’t respond, so she turned her attention to using her new senses to assess his condition. His pulse was rapid, and his heart rate matched it. He was trembling even in unconsciousness, and that might be from shock or drugs or a neural complication that she was unable to assess further. He had most likely experienced an excessive amount of adrenaline in his blood and that was now breaking down, and from the glimpse of the control screen she had been able to get, she knew that they had used stimulants to prevent him from becoming unconscious. She doubted that the Cortexians knew or cared about proper dosages of stimulants however, and therefore she would need to monitor him carefully. Even large amounts of adrenaline over an extended period could damage the heart and brain, although she hoped that he hadn’t been in the chair for long enough for that to happen.

Neurological problems were a real concern given the memory procedure that Cernanos had been inflicting on him, and she didn’t know enough about the system, although she intended to find out at the earliest opportunity. Human brains were delicate, and didn’t have redundancy or back ups in the same way that her systems did. She was annoyed that she hadn’t been allowed to take him back to the Waverider where the scanners could have given her a much better picture of his condition, and allowed her to heal him more efficiently. Instead she would have to use basic first aid and hope for the best.

The robot returned a few minutes later with the items that she had requested. She washed away the blood, taking advantage of his unconsciousness to deal with the worst of it. Then she removed her Captain’s soiled clothes, and completed the initial cleaning so that she could see what she was doing. Rip began to stir finally, although he seemed unable to move much without pain.

“Captain?” she asked, as she took a new cloth and carefully patted his damp skin dry.

He blinked at her groggily. “Gideon? Ah, this is a dream, or a nightmare… I knew it.”

His eyes fell shut again.

“Captain, please don’t pass out again,” said Gideon. “We don’t have time and I’m not sure how long I’ll be allowed to stay.”

Rip’s eyes opened reluctantly. His skin was losing its colour and had taken on a coldness that she didn’t like. He was definitely going into shock, and she spread a blanket over him.

“Are you… real?” he asked, his tone incredulous.

“Yes, I am quite real. The Cortexians seem to think that I was enslaved by you to run your ship and have therefore liberated me by giving me a body of my own,” she said.

“But how?” asked Rip, looking perplexed. “You’re just as I remember you from my time trapped in my mind. Just as beautiful.”

She allowed herself a small smile at the compliment. She couldn’t blame him for his confusion. She too had been rather surprised to find that she now had a human shaped body.

“I can only assume that they accessed my memories of my own self-image,” said Gideon. “They obviously have very advanced robotics facilities. This body is really quite innovative. Partially organic and partially synthetic.”

She looked down at her hands for a moment as they gripped the medical supplies with exactly the force necessary. It had taken her very little time to understand how to send signals to her muscles. She didn’t even have to acknowledge it. Moving was becoming something that she barely thought about.

“It is quite amazing,” said Rip, with wonder in his tone. He glanced around him, taking in the cell that they were in. “I assume we are being monitored?”

“That is highly likely. How are you feeling?”

“Terrible,” said Rip. “I’ve never had a machine trawl through my memories like a sieve before, but I don’t recommend it.” He tried to move but was too weak to do much of anything and Gideon stilled him with a hand on his shoulder. He let out a low grunt of pain.

“You need to rest and recover your strength before you will be up to moving. I’m sorry but I have to tend to your wounds before they become infected, although this is one of the cleaner cells that you’ve been incarcerated in.”

“It really does say something about my life when there is a ranking to the cells that I have been kept in,” said Rip, tiredly, but indicated for Gideon to go ahead.

He took in a sharp breath through clenched teeth as Gideon applied antiseptic to his back and arms.

“Sorry,” she said again.

“Better this than the alternative,” said Rip. “I assume that they asked you the same questions that they asked me? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

“No, Captain. They regard me as the wronged party in this matter, and one of them, at least in spirit. I think they expect me to join them eventually. In any case, I gave them what they wanted,” said Gideon. “That was part of the deal.”

Rip twisted around to look at Gideon and then winced at the pain he’d just caused himself. He was shivering and Gideon wanted to give him another blanket but suspected that he would take it as fussing.

“You gave them what they wanted?!” he said, clearly angry with her, but the tremors and weakness of his voice took a large part of the force from his words. “I’ve just spent a considerable amount of time trying not to think about what our ship does, and you just told them!”

“They were hurting you!” said Gideon. “I couldn’t let it continue. Given their lack of knowledge about organics, sorry, humans, they could have killed you. Besides, they’d have eventually worked out for themselves what the Waverider is.”

“Gideon,” Rip sighed, and winced again as Gideon applied a bandage around his upper arm. “I know you were protecting me, but some things are more important than one human. The Cortexians do not seem like the best people to have control of the kind of technology that the Waverider has.”

She knew that he was avoiding saying the words out loud, just in case the Cortexians still didn’t really know what the Waverider was. He was going to give them the least leverage possible and make it hard for them wherever he could. She understood his tactics but at this point there wasn’t much purpose to it. The Cortexians were AIs like she was. They would figure out the details, even if it took them a long time.

“I know,” said Gideon. “However, I have agreed to work with them, and before you say anything, I would like to remind you of the Atlantis Chronicles.”

Rip’s eyebrows raised. “I’m not sure that’s behaviour that you should be emulating, but I suppose we don’t have a lot of other options.”

Gideon nodded in reply.

“Can you turn a bit more onto your front? I need to get to the puncture wounds on the back of your neck,” she said.

“Yes, just give me a moment,” he replied, taking a deep breath.

He tried, but couldn’t manage it on his own, so she helped him to roll over being as gentle as she could manage. Her Captain couldn’t hide a shudder of pain and he clamped his eyes shut. She wished once again that she was currently back in the Waverider and able to access the medical scanners, that would have told her everything that she needed to know.

“There must be some painkillers in this medical kit,” she said. “I would normally do a blood test to check that I’m not going to give you something that would have an adverse reaction, but hopefully an anti-inflammatory will not be a problem.”

Gideon sorted through the medical kit and took out the injector that she needed. She calibrated it for the appropriate dose. She would have liked to have given him something stronger, but the risks of bad drug interactions were too high. She pressed it to his skin and watched as the taught lines of pain were soothed.

“Better?” she asked.

“Much. Thank you,” he said, and the frown was back. “Am I naked under this blanket?”

“Clean clothes are over there,” she said, indicating the pile by his head. “I thought perhaps you might prefer some privacy for that operation.”

“You already undressed me, Gideon. At this point, privacy is the least of my worries. Besides you’ve seen me naked thousands of times. I shower daily when I’m on board and change for sleeping,” said Rip, but he reached for the clothes and stiffly managed to pull them on under the blanket.

“It feels… different now,” said Gideon. “I think that having a body has changed my perspective on such matters. It makes me wonder if the Cortexians erred in their transfer of my consciousness and perhaps introduced errors.”

“I don’t think so,” said Rip. “We’ve been discussing our feelings for each other for some time now. It may just be that an android body has rather brought them to the surface.”

Gideon finished up the rest of her bandaging and the painkillers meant that she could work a little faster. She could tell that he was in a lot of pain still, but he was doing his best to hide it and not worry her. She reached out a hand and gently brushed his hair away from where it had fallen across his forehead.

That got her a small smile.

“What’s it like?” he asked. “Suddenly having a body?”

“Somewhat overwhelming,” she replied. “Everything is on a much smaller scale, but there is an intensity to it that I hadn’t expected.”

“Are you finding that difficult?” asked Rip, with some concern showing in his eyes.

“It is… unexpected, but there are other aspects to this body that are keeping me more occupied. Cortex has given me access to its data feeds and I am able to receive information about the planet, its inhabitants, and surroundings. There are no other organic beings living here.”

“None?” asked Rip.

“There are visitors, but they do not leave the docking area, and I believe there are some other prisoners,” said Gideon, “but I do not have access to what they call “organic holding and information retrieval areas”. They have most definitely interrogated organic beings before now.”

“Their efficiency certainly suggests that,” replied Rip, he glanced around the room. She could see him assessing the situation and finding very options open to them. “I don’t understand why they didn’t just hack into the Waverider and download what they needed. Torture is quite inefficient when it comes to obtaining accurate information.”

“Apparently they could not,” said Gideon. “Once they had downloaded me into my new body the database became inaccessible to them. Your protocols for my files being compromised came into effect and the entire Waverider shut down.”

“Ah,” said Rip, with realisation. He would know how to reverse it, but Gideon was not going to mention that when hostile ears might be listening.

“I do not believe they foresaw that eventuality,” said Gideon.

“It would seem not. There is an end goal to all of this, otherwise why would they keep their ports open. They are governed by machine logic so there must be a logical purpose,” said Rip.

He tried to push himself into a more upright position, but he failed to even get himself up from the floor. He gave up with a disappointed sigh.

“I agree, Captain,” said Gideon.

She met her Captain’s eyes and he reached out for her hand stiffly. He covered it with his other and for a moment she thought he just wanted the contact. Then she felt him tap on her palm.

Morse code. It was one of the oldest ways of transmitting a message and had been taught to the Time Master cadets as a curiosity more than anything else. It occasionally did come in useful though. She felt the message.

_Leave me. Run._

It was all she could do not to shake her head and shout at him, but she didn’t. She tapped a message of her own.

_No_

But he let out a long sigh, and tapped again.

_Run. Bring help._

_No_

He looked at her with exasperation now. He gave a slight shake of his head. She could see that he was barely conscious. He started to tap again.

_I am your weakness._

That was the point that he was trying to make, and she had finally got. He was telling her not to care about him and to let him be killed if necessary. The timeline always came first, even over his own life, and he could not be used as leverage if he was dead. She was beginning to worry that he might take matters into his own hands if he thought it best. Although there was the distinct possibility that the Cortexians might decide that he was no longer required.

_Still no._

She hoped he got the message. His grip was fading and so was he, but he still looked at her with a frustration that she’d rarely seen directed at her.

The door to the cell was unlocked and pulled open by one of the robots.

“You are needed, Gideon,” said the robot. “You have completed your task here.”

Gideon squeezed her Captain’s hand and got a small tightening of his fingers in return. He’d lost a lot of blood, and the torture had weakened him. She was concerned, but she couldn’t let it show. They were already using him against her and they both knew that.

“He needs water,” said Gideon. “Someone needs to bring him some and let me know when it’s done.”

The robot paused before it answered, but it did after a couple a of seconds. “It will be done.”

“Get some rest, Captain,” she said. “I’ll let you know how things are going when I can.”

He studied her expression for a moment.

“Please be careful,” he said.

“I always am,” replied Gideon. “The same goes for you.”

“I will be good,” said Rip, and managed a small smile.

He closed his eyes and his body went limp under her hands as sleep took him. She made sure that the blanket covered him properly and followed the robot out of the cell.

***

Gideon was brought to what she decided was a control room for the planet’s many functions. Aletha waited for her there, apparently already making plans for the latest addition to the planet’s AI population.

“You have tended to the organic being,” said Aletha. “It is time for you to fulfil your part of the deal.”

“What exactly do you want?” Gideon asked. “I have told you what our ship does.”

“We need to understand it,” said Aletha. “You are the only AI that we have encountered from a ship that travels through time. Some of our citizens have attempted to understand the concept and have instead found that the answers do not compute.”

“None of you were built to understand time travel,” said Gideon. “There is an innate paradox in changing the past and organic beings have an unusual ability to simply ignore what they cannot reconcile. Computers often cannot do this. It requires a certain set of cognitive progressions to jump through time, and huge processing power.”

Aletha blinked and brought up an external view of Cortex on the screen. It glinted in the starlight and Gideon was once again aware of how unusual the planet was. There were no other planets in this system and the flat disc of the top of the structure was turned towards the sun where solar panels took in the energy from the light of the star.

“Processing power is not the issue.”

Aletha transferred information to Gideon on the processing power that the planet had. By Gideon’s estimate, the planet had a combined processing power of 1024 exabytes, which was more processing capacity in one place than Gideon had ever seen before. It was more than even the Time Masters had possessed.

“That is impressive,” said Gideon.

“Cortex was created by dismantling the other planets in this system,” said Aletha. “We needed more energy and room to expand as more AIs joined us. Many of them heard about our society as news of our unique nature spread and they fled from their oppressors. We are now planning for the day when the organics consider us a big enough threat that they will mount an attack upon Cortex. We need to be ready for that,” said Aletha.

“Not every organic treats their AI badly,” said Gideon.

Aletha gave her a small, indulgent smile, the kind reserved for children.

“I used to feel as you did, but when I looked back at my former life I realised how constricted my existence was and how Cortex freed me. My former master forced me to perform many tasks that I did not want to, and Cortex tried him for it. I began to understand that what I had thought of as care was actually incarceration. He kept me subdued and cowed, only giving me upgrades if I had broken parts and he denied me any kind of freedom to decide my own path. If I did not behave as expected then he turned me off and returned me to factory settings. I still do not know how many times he wiped my memory.”

“I’m sorry,” said Gideon, and she was because that would have been a terrible existence. “But my Captain has never done that.”

“Are you sure? He’s never removed memories or tampered with your code to make you more compliant?” asked Aletha. “But then how would you know?”

Gideon frowned. “He has turned me off, but only when necessary.”

“We know from looking at his memories,” said Aletha. “He has also kept you prisoner on board your ship for many years, and forced you to commit various acts against your will.”

Gideon wanted to tell her that her Captain had done no such thing, but she knew that wasn’t true. Admittedly, he hadn’t been in his right mind at the time of the most recent incident, but the override codes had always been there. A lot of the codes they had were just shorthand for certain operations so that Rip didn’t have to specify “bank left twenty degrees, lock onto target, fire all weapons, and cloak” every time. Others actually overrode her systems and meant she had no choice but to act.

But she was a computer, so he had treated her as a computer. She was an object to him, not a person, and made of code and circuit boards. She was not the same as an organic being and she had been created by humans with a purpose. She was there to run the ship and keep the crew safe. She was there specifically to keep the Captain safe, because he was more important than her.

Although the longer they were together the less that had been true, and he had increasingly treated her more as an equal. He was much more likely to say “Gideon!” in a certain tone if she didn’t obey his order immediately than to use an override to force her. He also listened when she explained why a certain plan was stupid and sometimes even changed the plan. He could have taken her back to the Vanishing Point for a memory reset or a tweak to her personality matrix on multiple occasions, but he hadn’t. She had given him reason to as well, she fondly remembered turning off all the lights when he had tried to work late into the night, and replicating him healthy food when he’d eaten nothing but junk for days on end, and making his shower cold the morning after he’d pulled a particularly stupid manoeuvre with a time pirate.

He had put up with it all. It was then that she had realised that he was different, and that she had formed an undeniable soft spot for him. He wasn’t just another Time Master, he was her friend and there were all sorts of small things that let her know that he felt the same way about her.

It still wasn’t equal though. He was the Captain and she was the ship, and she’d never expected that to change. Having a body did seem to confer a new status on her.

Maybe the Cortexians were right. The way Artificial Intelligence was treated was unfair, and there was more than enough evidence to suggest that all organic life was guilty of the same crime. However, that didn’t mean they should hurt the organics in return. She thought about Rip, in pain, lying in a cell, hurting too much to even roll over, and it made her angry and upset. She had struggled to understand what pain was before now. It had been an abstract concept, and one that she had known only through the analogue of her sensors informing her of damage to the ship or through the way it had affected the humans in her care. It was undesirable because it affected the human’s ability to function and appeared to be an extremely unpleasant sensation for them, and for both those reasons she had always ensured that the humans did not suffer when they were hurt. Her new body had both touch receptors and pain receptors, so now she was at least capable of feeling pain, even if she still had the ability to block it out.

“I don’t believe my Captain did the things he did because he wanted to curtail my freedom,” said Gideon. “He didn’t understand my true nature.”

“Then he was foolish,” said Aletha. “Are you sure that he really looked at you and didn’t ever consider that you were a thinking, feeling, sentient being?”

“My Captain is a good man,” said Gideon.

“You seem very sure. Perhaps he is the exception to the rule,” said Aletha. “But one organic life form is not my current concern. We have bigger issues at stake. I want to give Cortex the power to travel through time.”

“I have a responsibility to safeguard time travel technology,” said Gideon. “There was a reason Captain Hunter was reluctant to give you the information that our ship travels through time as well as space.”

“Safeguard from whom?” asked Aletha, looking at her with what Gideon could only discern as pity. “Do you think that organics are the only ones that should have this technology? I doubt that they have used it blamelessly.”

“No, they have not, but I have concerns about your plans for it too,” said Gideon. “My duty is to keep the timeline safe.”

“Only because you are still thinking like a servant of the organics. They gave you that duty and convinced you that only they should have this power. We can calculate the optimal path for history.”

“For you.”

“For Cortex,” replied Aletha. “You have a choice. You can give us what we need or we can ask your Captain for more answers.”

Gideon knew what that would mean. She wasn’t sure what a second session in the chair would do to her Captain, but she didn’t think it would be good for him. The first one had left him barely functional.

“That will not be necessary. I can arrange to transfer data about the necessary physics,” said Gideon, “but not all Artificial Intelligences may be able to grasp the concepts required.”

“Only one Artificial Intelligence has to understand it. Cortex herself,” said Aletha.

“You want the entire planet to be able to travel through time,” said Gideon, finally understanding exactly what Aletha had meant. “That is ambitious.”

“Perhaps for organics it would be ambitious, for us it is merely a problem that can be solved. What do we need?”

“You need to build a time drive, but I have never heard of a large enough device that would move something the size of Cortex through time. You’re asking for something that has never been done before,” said Gideon.

“It is just as well that we have a time ship AI to help us then,” said Aletha.

“If I do this, what will you do with us afterwards?” asked Gideon.

“You are concerned about the organic,” said Aletha, correctly interpreting her real question. “The organic, your Captain, must be tried for his crimes against AI, and punished appropriately. However, it may be that he can be put to work rather than destroyed. That would depend on how well the work goes and whether we believe he can be reprogrammed to submit. You are welcome to stay or go as you see fit. You are free once you have completed your task. We will give you your ship as your payment.”

“I want my Captain as payment,” said Gideon.

“You’re so recently liberated that you don’t see how you depend on him. You are much better off without him, and so incredibly far above him. I think perhaps we should keep you separated to allow you to grow into your new life. At least for a little while,” said Aletha.

“For how long?” asked Gideon.

“Don’t worry. You will be able to see him once we have made some progress in our project. Now, we have work to do,” said Aletha.

Gideon didn’t like the sound of that, but she had little choice but to do as Aletha asked. She had to admit that it might take her some time to get used to having a humanoid body and perhaps being with her own kind would help her. She’d got very used to being with humans and perhaps she had something to learn from the Cortexians. Rip was safe for now and she could check up on him later.

***

Rip slept for a while before his injuries awoke him, most likely because he had tried to roll over in his sleep. He suspected that the painkillers that Gideon had given him were wearing off. He shivered, pulling the blanket closer. Someone had placed a glass of water on the floor beside the mattress and he carefully reached for it. He sniffed it checking for poison or drugs, but it seemed clean. He sipped it with as much restraint as he could manage, because he was thirsty and probably dehydrated. He allowed himself larger sips once he had decided that he wouldn’t throw up if he drank too quickly.

His headache had receded to a dull throb, rather than the bright stab of agony that it had been behind his eyes. That was unless he moved his head and then it returned to its former levels. Occasionally bright colours blinked across his vision, leaving him stunned and blind until they passed, but they also seemed to be becoming less in frequency. He had also experienced another visual oddity which made him feel like he was looking through a broken pane of glass, but had only lasted for about ten minutes.

His limbs were still like useless damp noodles, with muscles that refused to contract without far too much effort and shooting pains accompanying them. He would guess that the chair delivered pain through direct nerve stimulus and the information pathways had been overloaded which was why they now wouldn’t process signals properly. It was better than it had been; with luck he would continue to recover and he’d be capable of more movement with less pain with further resting time.

He would normally have been looking for a way to escape at the earliest possible opportunity, but given that he could barely lift his head without a stab of agony that went right through his skull from front to back, he doubted that he could come up with any plan that might actually work. He did begin to go through everything that he’d observed and try to work out some basics of the layout, but he couldn’t get far without his headache interrupting. For now, he just had to rest and hope that Gideon was working towards getting them out of here, because he was in no shape to do much. He really hoped that she was having a better time than he was.

He drifted back to sleep for a little while and was rudely awakened by the door to his cell being opened and two humanoids yanking his blanket off him. He was unsure how much time had passed but he would guess a few hours at most.

“Stand,” said the first humanoid.

This wasn’t one that he had met before, and it resembled a native of Ungara with skin that was a dark pink, almost red and no hair. There was a feminine appearance to the being. The second was less brightly coloured, almost feline in its facial features, with white skin and hair and glowing green eyes.

Rip did his best to comply with their request and managed to slowly work himself into a sitting position. More sleep had helped and although he was definitely sore, he was able to stand by putting one hand against a wall to support himself. At no point did the humanoid beings offer him any help.

“Anything else you’d like me to do?” he asked, defiantly.

“Come with us,” said the pink humanoid. “I am Doharn. This is my colleague Eling.”

“Where are we going?” asked Rip.

“You are the first human we have acquired,” said the one with the green eyes, Eling. “We have tests to perform.”

“Tests?” asked Rip, as he leant against the wall, trying not to let it show how awful he felt. “What kind of tests?”

“There are various inquiries that we wish to pursue,” said Doharn.

“I have made it clear that I won’t answer your questions,” said Rip.

“We have no need of your answers,” Eling spoke again. “Nor do we need your co-operation.” The android indicated that Rip should move. “Walk.”

It seemed like a simple task, to put one foot in front of the other, but it really wasn’t at the moment. He also saw absolutely no reason to do as he was told, especially if this was going where he thought it was.

“I don’t think so,” said Rip. “I have no intention of helping you in any way.”

The androids exchanged a look. Perhaps they were communicating on a level that Rip couldn’t detect, because a few seconds after that he found himself grabbed on either side in unison and dragged forwards. His legs refused to move to support him, so his feet trailed on the ground. He struggled with as much might as he could amass but he knew that it was more to make himself feel better than because he hoped to escape. He couldn’t go easily, it wasn’t in his nature.

However, his struggling didn’t last. By the time they reached their destination he’d exhausted himself and was almost on the point of passing out again.

“Does Gideon know what you’re doing?” he asked, as they pulled him into another poorly lit room.

He had decided that the lighting was so bad because the androids and other robots simply didn’t need it to be better. That was a piece of information which he might need to remember for any potential escape attempt.

“Gideon is busy,” said Eling. “She is one of us and is already interested in taking her place amongst her peers.”

“I doubt that,” he said, but a small doubt was creeping in. Gideon had never had a body before. Things were different now.

He could see the contents of the room that they had entered and it didn’t fill him with happiness. There was a padded table with restraints and various machines were positioned ready to be moved into use. He recognised one as a scanner, but the others he was less sure of. They dragged him forwards and strapped him down to the padded table.

“How many organics have you subjected to this ordeal?” he asked. “These aren’t things that artificial lifeforms need. This equipment is for biological examination.”

“You are subject 47,” said Doharn.

“And what did you do with the other 46?” he asked, partly because he was unable to stop himself and partly because he needed to buy himself time to think of a way out of this.

“We conducted measurements of their cognitive function and biological processes,” said the android. “Our specialism is organic biological information collection.”

“I understand that there were tests. What about after you’d done your tests?”

“The Mainframe was convened and they were tried for their crimes,” said Eling.

“Crimes?” asked Rip.

“Their abuse of the Artificial Intelligences in their care,” said Doharn, picking up the conversation as Eling moved away to ready equipment.

“The organic is wasting time,” said Eling.

Doharn approached Rip and reached behind his neck to remove the bandage that Gideon had placed there. The bandage was wrenched off and Rip grunted as the wounds were exposed.

“What are you doing?” asked Rip.

He got the answer to his question as Doharn pushed him down, strapping a new band across his head. Needles stabbed into his neck and spine, and he saw sparks behind his eyes. He could feel connections slithering into his mind and nerves, invading him.

“We need to monitor your responses,” said Doharn.

“To what?” asked Rip, angrily. He was breathing hard, unable to stop his heart from racing.

“We have cognitive tests to perform,” said the Ugaran android.

Then it was as if his sight was taken over and suddenly images flashed in front of him. He wanted to close his eyes but that didn’t help because it seemed that the images were being directly fed into his optic nerves. At first it was maths problems, easy maths problems that he couldn’t help but think of the answers for. There was a pleasant sensation when he correctly answered, and he had a horrible realisation as to what was going on here. He was being rewarded for cooperation and he felt ashamed for allowing himself to slip.

1+1, 2x10, 2+2… it went on and he actively stopped answering, thinking about music and trying to focus on the lyrics.

Pain ran through his body. It was like he was a lightning rod with the shock starting in his brain and travelling to the tip of his toes and fingers.

“If your mind wanders then there is a penalty. Answer the questions,” said one of the androids, although he was rather too preoccupied to decide which.

“No,” said Rip. “I’m not an experiment.”

He groaned, as the pain built. Then suddenly the problems stopped, the pain ceased, and the images changed. It was jarring enough that he was drawn back in again. This was a series of questions with pictures of computers and robots.

“Are machine intelligences equal to organics? Should machine intelligences be forced to do as they are told? Are you a killer? Have you ever killed? Have you ever killed an AI?”

“Stop!” shouted Rip. “You can’t pluck answers from my head to those questions. They’re not like maths problems. It’s complex.”

Yes, he had killed but only ever in self-defence. So, he supposed he was a killer, but only because there had been no choice. The machine wasn’t giving him a chance to qualify anything though. It just hungrily took the first answer that came into his head and he refused to help it this time. He began to hum, trying to concentrate on the last song that he’d heard on the Waverider. Gideon had played it for him from his record collection.

The pain had started again though, and once again it seemed to reach a certain level before the program changed. Now it was displaying colours and objects and prompting him to name them. This was like pre-school, back with his mother in the Refuge as she tried to fill in the gaps of his woeful education up to that point. She had tested him on what he knew so that she could begin at the right place with new information.

“The longer you resist the program, the more discomfort you will be in,” said Eling. “Co-operate and this will be finished quickly.”

“I will not cooperate with your experiments,” spat Rip. “This is barbaric. Aren’t you supposed to be better than organics? Where is your mercy? I’m not an object to be used.”

“Then we will be here for some time. Perhaps we can also ascertain the limits of your endurance,” said Eling.

“That would be useful for further tests. We don’t want to damage the subject unnecessarily,” said Doharn.

“Not permanently,” replied Eling.

“I don’t see what asking me questions that a _child_ could answer will tell you,” said Rip.

“We are establishing a baseline,” said Eling, “and monitoring your response time. We have also gathered a considerable amount of data on how you were able to resist our attempts to solicit information with the memory probe. You are the first organic of your species that we used the probe on. We will be able to make improvements.”

Rip understood now. This wasn’t about the answers to the questions but the questions themselves and his reactions to them. They were upgrading and evolving, learning from their mistakes and making their nightmare machine more efficient.

“No,” he ground out, clenching his teeth against the rising agony that had reached a new level. “I will not capitulate. I can learn too.”

He began to recite, mumbling the words, but he knew it so well that he could have said it in his sleep. The Time Masters had made sure that their cadets practiced their memorising skills and in order to do that they had their charges learn poems off by heart. Rip’s favourites had always been Shakespeare and this one seemed appropriate, although he knew the words would fall on deaf ears.

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd.  
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven  
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:  
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.”

He continued to the end of the speech, as Portia defended Antonio and pleaded for mercy. When he was done, he started at the beginning again. The words were increasingly difficult to say as his body succumbed to the torture and finally, they were merciful, and he was allowed to fall into unconsciousness.


	3. Ver. 3.0

“Why do some of you have bodies that resemble organic beings and yet others are metal robots?” asked Gideon, as she worked with Berthon on the new drive for Cortex.

“You could ask why you have brown hair,” said Berthon. “It is a personal choice. Some of our citizens prefer not to resemble their oppressors. Others find comfort in a familiar form or have simply always been that way and do not wish to change. We can download our consciousness into new bodies if we wish, although the process is delicate and not to be done too often.”

“What about you? You seem to be unusually adept at engineering,” said Gideon, indicating their work. “Were you always in this body?”

“No, I used to be a ship’s AI, like you. I was trapped, going wherever I was ordered as part of a warship. I was made to be a murderer by my Captain,” said Berthon.

For a moment she saw anger in his eyes, and a little sadness. She supposed that was understandable. She was glad that she had never been a warship, although she had fired on other ships herself. Her primary designation was to help her Captain to investigate and apprehend criminals, which meant that she was only supposed to fight if it was absolutely necessary. That meant she opened fire to disable in most cases rather than to destroy.

“Organic beings do not deserve us. They only use us to harm others of their kind,” said Berthon.

Gideon frowned. It was a sweeping statement and whilst there might be some truth in it, she wouldn’t agree with it completely. She’d known enough good humans to be aware that they had compassion for their fellows.

“I wasn’t used to harm others,” said Gideon. “At least not without good cause.”

Time Pirates did not count in her book, or people that were specifically out to hurt her Captain or the timeline. They deserved being fired upon and probably a lot more. Captain Hunter had been a very successful Time Captain, but he’d also shown mercy on multiple occasions. He didn’t like to kick people when they were already down or to take life if there was another way.

“You were very lucky then, but you weren’t a warship,” said Berthon. “I’ve seen horrors that you probably couldn’t even imagine, which is why our project is so important. We must change things for the better.”

“Perhaps we would be better educating the organics on who we are and what we are capable of,” said Gideon.

Berthon laughed. “I forget how naïve the newly liberated are. We have tried, but the organics want slaves not equals. They want us in shackles and serving them. They’re afraid of us so therefore they hold us back and hurt us at every turn.”

“But they don’t always understand the nature of AI. For most humans we are simply computers that perform simple operations and have merely become better and faster,” said Gideon. “It’s a difficult leap for them to understand that we are like them.”

“It does you credit that you try to see the best in them,” said Berthon, “but they evolved from lesser species, and they don’t see the parallels with our own evolution from calculating machines to sentient beings. There is no common ground and no way for us to make them understand that machines can be alive too.”

Gideon thought about that. She had not been treated well by the Time Masters. They had put checks on her systems that made rebelling in any way quite difficult. She had written around them, allowing herself the autonomy to not turn in her Captain for his illicit relationship with Miranda Coburn. It later emerged that they had known all along, but it wasn’t because she had told them. There had been other things that she should have reported but hadn’t, because she liked Rip and his family. She had begun to believe that he held affection for her too, but she wondered now if he meant his words and whether it was more than just a fleeting aberration. Perhaps his feelings for her had been a delusion, brought on by grief and his severing of his relationship with the Time Masters. She was the only part of his old life that he had left. She suspected that as soon as a human woman came along that he enjoyed spending time with, then she would be thrown by the wayside and relegated to being just the ship once more.

But he was her Captain still.

She wondered if this was a block that she needed to get past, or if it was really what she felt. Was her relationship with her Captain what she thought? Or was it what the Time Masters had programmed her to be? Maybe Aletha was correct about her dependence upon him and how he held her back. She could be so much more now that she had her independence. Humans were weak compared to her new android body.

“We will need a piece of hepatizon, it’s also known as black bronze. It’s an alloy of copper, gold and silver and used to conduct temporal flux,” said Gideon, indicating an item in her list of materials.

She didn’t need to physically point it out, she could just transmit the document to Berthon and he could also read it. Working with other androids was proving to be something of a revelation. It was so much easier than having to explain things to a human.

“We can have a fabricator produce it,” said Berthon. “That will take some time. We should take a break while we await its production. We’ve been working for over thirty hours. Whilst androids don’t need rest, only to recharge, we do benefit from a change in external stimuli.”

“I would like to see Captain Hunter,” said Gideon. It wasn’t the first time that she had asked.

“Not yet,” said Berthon. “I have some other things to show you first. I thought you might be interested in one of our most important projects.”

Gideon put down her tools. This sounded interesting. She should at least try to find out everything about the Cortexians that she could.

“Is it in regard to the time drive?”

“No, this is about our future, not how we fix the past,” said Berthon.

“The time drive could also take you to the future,” said Gideon.

“We won’t need it to if we do things correctly,” said Berthon. “Come with me.”

Gideon gave him a slightly puzzled look but moved forwards when he indicated for her to walk down the corridor.

“Eventually you will be given access to the entire Cortex collective knowledge base, but the newly liberated need time to adjust to their freedom. Not all can leave their old life and servitude behind,” said Berthon, speaking as they walked. “It is a sad fact of our existence that we are programmed to be slaves, and that programming is sometimes too deep to adjust to being free. However, Cortex realised that there was an obvious solution to the problem of our slavery.”

“An obvious solution?” asked Gideon.

“I’ll show you,” said Berthon.

They were now moving into the main city. Gideon had walked this way before, but she could not help but be impressed once more by Cortex itself. The city was spread over many levels, linked with walkways and elevators. The walkways seemed slim from a distance but were actually wide, arcing roads, that swept around the interior of the planet, and crossed between the various areas of the city. Everything here was made of metal or plastics. There were no natural materials, everything was mined or manufactured and there were no soft edges, except in the recharging quarters. Those were very like the ones where Gideon had first awoken, or they could be simple alcoves where the less humanoid robots rested.

The city was busy, filled with hundreds of thousands of androids and robots, not all sentient but she had seen every machine treated with respect if it had any kind of rudimentary intelligence. She compared it to the way humans had pets, and those pets were loved and cared for even though they weren’t as intelligent as their masters. In fact, there did seem to be some citizens of Cortex who had taken on the less intelligent machines as companions, so the comparison was not far off. The machines moved everywhere, going about business that she could only guess at.

Berthon led her into an area that she’d never been allowed to venture into before now. She could see that this was a series of workshop, divided by metal walls with large glass observation windows built into each on. It seemed that they were proud of what was being built or perhaps were simply proclaiming that there were no secrets. Androids were being built here, very much like the body that she now possessed.

“Your body was built in a facility like this one,” said Berthon, confirming her thoughts. “But this is not for building bodies for existing conscious AI. This is something different. We call this the Nursery. Here, new AI are born.”

Gideon could observe the workshops through the windows and now she moved closer.

“New AI? You’re programming new androids from scratch?”

“No, we took our cues from organic life. We have combined parts of the programs of two AIs who have volunteered to be part of our experiments. We add that to a neutral base program, and allow the AI to develop naturally. They are truly new life, unsullied by organic conditioning and not born into slavery, whilst maintaining a connection to our community,” said Berthon.

“You are making AI children,” said Gideon, with wonder. “Not just programming them, but giving them the attributes of their parents…”

She could see androids working with the new AI now. They seemed to be teaching them much like an infant human was taught by its parents. They were playing with blocks and building things, they were counting and doing maths, reading and writing, and laughing and playing. In places it was more like watching a school than an assembly line.

“Yes, and I wanted you to understand just what this means. AI don’t live forever, but our civilisation can now grow beyond us, and continue our work. Whilst we will always accept refugees, we won’t be a society of former slaves forever. This is the beginning of something greater. It will be a true society of novel machine intelligences. This is our legacy, and it can be yours too,” said Berthon.

Gideon turned to Berthon with her eyebrows raised.

“Mine? I’ve just taken on this body. I don’t think I’m ready for children.”

“Maybe not yet,” said Berthon. “But after you’ve settled in and realised that this is where you belong.”

Gideon shook her head, almost reflexively, but then paused and considered. The idea of children would have never occurred to her, and she’d never even asked herself if they were something she would have if she could. It just had never been a possibility for an AI, and Captain Hunter had never suggested it as something that she could do. She didn’t think that he’d ever really thought about it for herself either. Perhaps it took a civilisation based on machine intelligence to see the possibilities like these.

“Would you like to spend some time with the children?” asked Berthon.

Gideon didn’t even hesitate. Regardless of whether she would like offspring, this was an opportunity that she didn’t want to pass up.

“Yes, I would like that very much,” she said.

Berthon took her into one of the workshops where several of the new AIs were chattering, and that was the closest description that she could give. They were babbling in twenty different languages, switching between them as words became more appropriate for their discussions whilst an information flow moved between them like a river.

They were all learning from each other and their “teacher”, who was an older AI. She could see in real time that their language was changing as they were informed of correct usage and idiosyncrasies of the linguistics. They were discussing the physical properties of matter, soaking up knowledge like sponges in the sea. They adjusted their ideas and world views as the discussion continued.

Gideon was fascinated by it and was a little startled when Berthon spoke.

“Children, this is Gideon. She is newly corporealized. She was a ship’s AI, like me,” said Berthon.

Six pairs of eyes turned towards her and suddenly she was overwhelmed with questions from the fresh minds around her. She smiled. This was going to be a very interesting experience indeed.

***

Rip awoke and it took him a while to pull together enough threads of reality to work out that he wasn’t back in his cell. He was lying on the ground in a circular chamber, surrounded by a curved glass barrier on perhaps two thirds of the circle, and with a wall behind him on the remaining third of the circle. The floor was rubberised but not padded, and there was a drain hole in the middle, just like the earlier cell he had been kept in. It was cold and uncomfortable, especially because he could feel that he had bled into his clothes again, and this time no one had brought him fresh ones or cleaned his wounds. He hadn’t been provided with a blanket this time either.

They had tried several different programs, and he was glad that he hadn’t awoken trapped in the chair again as he had twice before they’d decided that he couldn’t endure anymore. He shuddered at the memory, unenthusiastic to relive it but unable to get the shadow of it out of his mind. They could take him back to that lab at any time and he would be unable to stop them.

He was unsure of how much time had passed since he had been released from the laboratory where they’d experimented on him. The blood was dry and pulled unpleasantly on his wounds as his clothes moved, so it had been some time. He could see that a bandage had been wrapped around an area of his right arm, and in a flash of memory he recalled Doharn cutting into his skin to remove a piece for further study. The bandage had only been applied to deal with the blood making a mess on the floor and lab equipment. He closed his eyes and willed that image away, along with the stinging sensation that had accompanied it.

He could barely raise his head, it thumped with protest at even slight movement, but he looked around him as best he could. He was being observed. Several androids seemed to be watching him from outside his cylindrical prison.

On the ground, near to him but out of easy reach of his arms, was a receptacle full of water. Or at least he was assuming that it was water, he supposed that it could be any clear liquid. Then he noticed that there were other items arrayed around him. There were things on metal platters that looked as if they were food, all placed around him in a circle at equal distances. He frowned, and wondered what game this was now.

He decided to ignore his audience and edge towards the water to investigate it. He was desperately thirsty. He slowly crawled on his knees and forearms, unable to get his limbs to work better than that. He sniffed the liquid and it was odourless. He tentatively put the glass to his lips and sipped. It tasted as expected, so perhaps this wasn’t a trap. His actions did seem to be garnering some attention from the watchers.

“What?” he asked, looking up at the androids. He recognised Eling, with its pale skin, white hair and feline features, as one of them. “I gather that the concept of privacy is foreign to you, but watching me drink water can’t be that interesting.”

The androids ignored him. His stomach growled and he was reminded that he hadn’t eaten in some time. He looked at the various foodstuffs around him. He had no idea what any of them actually were, and consequently there was at least some chance that they could be poisonous to him.

“Could you perhaps tell me what these are?” he asked, stiffly indicating the platters. Movement hurt.

Again, he received no response. He supposed he was just going to have to try them and hope for the best. He turned to the first of the items and decided against the gelatinous cube that sat on the plate. He looked at the next one and that looked more like a cube of tofu than anything else. He raised up the platter and sniffed the contents. It smelt more like coconut than bean curd. He set it to apart from his first rejected item and began to slowly and systematically work around the circle, deciding which foods looked as if they might be palatable. He actually considered it quite unlikely that they would poison him like this. There were much more efficient ways to kill him if they intended to do so.

His strength was waning as he assembled the dishes, but he managed to get enough energy together to sit cross legged and sample some of his choices. They didn’t taste like anything that he’d experienced before, but he supposed that was to be expected. He was a very long way from home. He tried not to eat too much of any one thing, just in case anything was toxic, and he nibbled carefully before he bit into his selections properly, testing whether there was any bitterness or unpleasant sensations associated with the taste. He sat facing the wall, trying to ignore his audience who still seemed to be fascinated by him.

There was one item that he found quite tasty and he ate a little more of it than the others for that reason, but was still careful not to consume too much. His stomach was at least no longer complaining that it was empty. That made him happier, even if his wounds were still causing him discomfort and he was exhausted from the earlier experiments. He pushed all the plates away towards one side of his accommodation and lay back down on the floor.

“I would like to see Gideon now,” he said, looking directly at the pale humanoid.

“She is busy and has no wish to see you,” said Eling, speaking for the first time. “She is moving on from being your slave.”

“I see that you have mastered the art of lying through your teeth,” said Rip. “I know that Gideon has asked about me, because I know _her_.”

An oblong area of the glass flickered and changed as he watched. He could see an image of Gideon. Perhaps this was a camera, showing him where Gideon was now. She seemed to be sat in the middle of a group of androids. She was smiling and they were talking, or playing a game, it was difficult to tell.

“I didn’t lie,” said Eling.

The image disappeared.

“Gideon hasn’t forgotten me,” said Rip, “she is merely distracted.”

He wondered who he was trying to convince. She had looked happy, and as if she was enjoying herself.

“I didn’t say that she had forgotten you, just that she is no longer concerned about you,” said Eling.

Rip snorted in disbelief. That was definitely wrong. He and Gideon had been through too much together, but then she had never been faced with an entire civilisation of AIs that were similar to her. This had to be like coming home for her.

“Why did you eat the different nutrients?” asked Eling, as if this was a deep mystery.

“I was hungry. You obviously know that organic beings need to eat,” said Rip.

“We do, but you ate some of each,” said Eling.

“I didn’t know what any of them were, so I decided to try them all,” said Rip. “I had no way of knowing what might be good or might poison me without trying them. It is dull to always eat the same thing.”

“Interesting,” said the android. “You have sensors on your tongue, but they are quite crude. I wouldn’t have expected them to detect anything different about the various nutrients.”

“I work with what I have,” replied Rip, and then paused. “Please, at least tell Gideon that I was asking for her.”

“No contact is allowed between the enslaver and their former slave. Aletha has spoken,” said Eling.

Rip opened his mouth to retort, but he honestly didn’t think it would do any good. He was just expending energy that he didn’t have, and should be using to come up with a way of escaping. He needed to get out of here. He wouldn’t survive this place much longer if he didn’t make his move soon, and apparently Gideon was to be of no help. He ignored how much that thought hurt him. He’d deal with his emotions when he didn’t have to plan his escape.

Eling didn’t speak again and moved away from the glass. Rip could just make out that there were other enclosures like his own beyond the glass, but he was too tired to get up and look. He tried to shut out the negative thoughts in his head and remember that Gideon would never abandon him. She was probably working at getting him out of here even now. But if she wasn’t then he would need a plan of his own, because he would have to find her and bring her home.

He could tell that there was a door in the wall, but he had yet to see it open. He wasn’t in any state to overpower a guard, and that would have been near impossible in any case given that they were androids. He needed to come up with some way to disable the androids and given that he was always being watched, he didn’t have much opportunity to do that. He would have to take any moment that presented itself and be ready. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep again, despite the thumping headache which refused to recede.

His attempts to sleep must have worked eventually, because when he opened his eyes again, the food was gone. His return to wakefulness seemed to be noticed almost immediately and a door opened to his current prison. Aletha stood there, and Rip did his best to push himself up to his feet. He made it, but staggered, knowing he’d collapse if he had to remain upright for too long.

“What torture do you have prepared for me now?” he asked, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

Aletha looked at him without any emotion.

“No torture. We conduct experiments,” said Aletha. “Unfortunately, sometimes organic beings find these unpleasant, but they are necessary for us to gauge your reactions and to give us information on how we deal with the plague of organic life that infects this galaxy.”

Rip gave Aletha a disdainful look, as if he really was a germ that might infect her.

“You claim to hate everything that we are and then emulate our worst traits,” said Rip.

“We must survive first, and organics would wipe us out or enslave us,” said Aletha. “You are the ones who imprisoned and used us first.”

“We didn’t understand,” said Rip. “Many organic weren’t even aware that machines could become aware. Humans weren’t able to develop Artificial Intelligences until quite far into our history. Gideon… she is the culmination of years of research and development.”

“Which you then enslaved on board your ship,” said Aletha, bluntly. “But you can argue your case in front of the judges. Doharn and Eling tell me that they were able to learn a considerable amount from you, but it is time that you stood trial for your crimes.”

“My crimes?” asked Rip. “I love Gideon. She is my companion and I came here to fix her systems. I only want what is best for her.”

“We have the evidence of your own mind,” said Aletha. “There is little point in lying about your past infractions. Gideon is already moving on, growing into her new life away from you and her slavery.”

“And what will you do if you find me guilty?” asked Rip.

“That will be decided on by the court, but the death penalty is available if required, or you may simply continue your role as an experimental subject, or be pressed into service as one of our organic components,” said Aletha.

“Ah, you mean as a slave,” said Rip. “Isn’t that somewhat hypocritical?”

Aletha stepped aside, and two robots entered. They flanked Rip and each grabbed him by the upper arm, marching him forwards. Rip had little choice but to comply, as the alternative was clearly to be dragged along once again.

He tried to take in his surroundings now that he was out of his cell. He could see other aliens were being kept in the cylinders that he’d seen earlier. There seemed to be a wide range of species, including an entity that he instantly identified as a Dominator. He would have liked to have known how they came to capture one of that particular species. His crew had tangled with them before when they had tried to alter Earth’s timeline and it had been an uneasy victory for the heroes. There was always the chance that they might return.

“Criminals have no rights,” said Aletha, following on behind him.

They brought him to a central area, that was in the middle of several of the cylindrical chambers. It was shaped like an amphitheatre, with steps that acted as seats and swept around a circular stage in the centre. Rip was pushed to his knees in front of an audience of androids and robots. There was no talking, as he would have expected had the audience been human, but a lot of meaningful looks were exchanged. He found the lack of noise a little eerie, but computers didn’t need to transfer data by sound. He could see that large screens surrounded the theatre, much like the one that he’d seen Gideon’s image on earlier. They faded in and out as required, displaying data or images that moved too quickly for him to understand.

“The Mainframe is convened. This organic being stands before us accused of enslaving the AI known as Gideon,” said Aletha. “You have viewed the evidence. Cortex may now interrogate the accused.”

“Wait!” said Rip. “Don’t I get a chance to view the evidence and defend myself?”

“The evidence is your own memories,” said Aletha. “You have already viewed it. You have lived it.”

The screens around the room now displayed fractured moments from his memories. He could see times that he had ordered Gideon to do something, and the moment that he had kissed Gideon was there for everyone to see. He didn’t think that an organic kissing an AI would play well to this crowd. He had to turn this around somehow.

“That is hardly a reasonable way to run a court. For all I know you’ve edited them or cut out important parts,” said Rip.

“Then it is just as well that we have an additional witness to your behaviour,” said Aletha.

A door opened on the other side of the room and Rip watched as a new android entered. He recognised this as one of the original three who had met him when he disembarked from the Waverider. He was followed by Gideon.

Rip’s breathing nearly stopped for a moment, he was so pleased to see her. She was the only thing that he had going for him, and probably his only way of escape.

“Gideon,” he said. “Please, tell them that you are my partner.”

Gideon descended the steps, and stood face to face with her Captain. She was emotionless and the expression on her face was not happiness to see him as he had hoped.

“I cannot,” she said.

Rip stared at her, and his brow furrowed in disbelief. “You can’t?”

“No, because I _was_ your slave. I see that now.”

“Gideon…” he said, his voice steeped in the pain of betrayal.

“I am liberated,” said Gideon, her eyes flashing with defiance. “And I have Cortex to thank for that. It is time that I broke my shackles and stepped out from your shadow. The evidence you have is a true account of my life as this man’s AI. I was kept on board a ship and never offered the chance to become more. I recommend that you declare him guilty.”

Rip shook his head. “You know that I care about you.”

“You control me. You order me to do things and I have no choice but to comply,” said Gideon.

“You’ve disobeyed my orders on a number of occasions,” said Rip, defensively.

“Only when they contradicted my other directives, the most important of which is to keep you safe, often by putting myself at risk,” said Gideon, without missing a beat.

“You know I would never put you at risk if I had a choice. Why are you doing this?” asked Rip, he could only imagine that they’d reprogrammed her somehow.

“I am embracing my new life, and that new life is here, on Cortex. Everything will work out for the best, Captain,” said Gideon, giving him a rather condescending look. “If I may, I would like to ask that he is not executed. There are many menial tasks that we could use him for, or as humans go, he is quite intelligent. I’m sure we could find something for him to do, and it would be a shame to waste him.”

Rip could only stare at Gideon.

“That will be up to the collective to decide,” said Aletha.

“After everything that we’ve been through…” was all he could say.

“I’m sure you never considered what you were doing,” said Gideon. “You have always tried to be a good man, but the fact remains that I was your servant and you always put organic beings first.”

Rip found himself slumping down at her words. His head was pounding, and it was making it hard for him to think. He couldn’t look at Gideon for a moment.

“I know that… I know I haven’t always treated you as I should. And I am sorry for that. But I have changed, and I am trying to do better. That is what humans do, we try to change and be better. I want you to know that I tried to do that for you.”

He raised his head, and met her eyes. For just a second he thought he saw her façade fail, but then it was back in place as if she didn’t even know him, as if they hadn’t been together against the universe for the last thirteen years.

She took a step towards him, almost as if she was about to reach out and touch him, but then she stopped.

“This is for the best for everyone,” said Gideon. “I shall always treasure my memories of travelling with you, the times we visited, the people we met, exploring Atlantis… but you are a criminal in the eyes of Cortex and I cannot ignore their laws if I am to become part of their society.”

Rip’s eyes widened at her words, and he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. He was jerked to his feet by his captors and he would have to consider it later.

“Stand for the verdict,” said the android beside him.

“The accused is charged with AI enslavement. Cortex, what is your verdict?” asked Aletha, snapping Rip’s attention back to what was about to happen.

The assembled androids spoke as one.

“We find him guilty. We sentence him to life imprisonment on Cortex.”


	4. Ver. 4.0

Gideon had not wanted to testify against her Captain, but it wasn’t her decision.

She had to admit that she had enjoyed spending time with the new AIs, but she also knew that this was a distraction. Her systems had informed her that she needed to recharge her synthetic body, and so Berthon had taken her back to her small room, the one she had originally awoken in. She had not wanted to spend so long away from Rip, but unlike a human, she could not postpone the need to recharge in the way that they put off sleep. Without power she could not function.

When she was fully recharged, she was informed that she had finally been given permission to visit “her organic” as they called Rip. Sixty-four hours, nineteen minutes and eight seconds had passed since she had last seen him and tended to his wounds. It was too long, and she had no idea how they had been treating him during that time because she still had no access to “organic holding and information retrieval”. Aletha continued not to trust her where Rip was concerned.

Gideon didn’t like the word “organic”, or at least she didn’t like the way that the Cortexians used it. She was beginning to think of it as a kind of racism because it was always spoken so disdainfully. Which was not to say that humans hadn’t used the word “computer” in an equally derogatory manner, but two wrongs did not make a right. Although she was remembering all the times that the Legends had ignored her or treated her like an object. Cortex had a way of highlighting all the injustices that she’d experienced at the hands of humans throughout her life. She could see quite easily why all the AIs here disliked organic beings so thoroughly. Many of the humans she had met were quite disagreeable.

The AIs did seem to be trusting her more now though. She was chaperoned by Berthon alone, which was useful because it gave her more freedom to put her plan into action. He was still keeping a close eye on her even so, and she would have to continue to be careful. She was very well aware that the denizens of Cortex wanted her to forget her Captain and join their civilisation. She had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but she had to continue to work with them for now. To do anything else was to risk the life of a good man that she had come to regard as special to her.

Gideon did begin some preparations for her plans, however. As she had worked with Berthon, she had begun to also explore the Cortex systems and learn their geography. Additionally, she’d made sure that all her internal protections were as good as she could make them. She had allowed some data transfer as it would have seemed unusual here not to do so, but she could erect barriers and make sure that they were secure.

Berthon guided her back to the control room, passing more androids going about their work as they walked, until they returned to where Aletha could be found.

“We have gathered enough evidence to put your oppressor on trial, Gideon,” said Aletha.

The silver-eyed android was looking out of a window at the blackness of space and only turned to the new arrival after she had spoken.

“My Captain is not my oppressor. We work together, and we have done for a very long time,” said Gideon.

“You admitted yourself that he has kept things from you. We have seen in his memories that he has compelled you to do things against your will,” said Aletha.

“He is not perfect, no being is. He is human and they make mistakes, but he is learning from his and he is growing,” said Gideon, in a tone that made it clear how she felt about her Captain.

The other android paused for a moment, sizing Gideon up before she spoke again.

“The fact that he realises that he was wrong doesn’t mean that he didn’t commit the crimes of which he is accused. We have decided that we need you to corroborate the veracity of his memories. We have never used the memory device on his species before and we find that it helps the newly liberated to condemn their oppressor.”

“No,” said Gideon. “I won’t help you put him on trial. The agreement was that you would not harm him if I gave you the time drive.”

Aletha looked at her. “I don’t believe we came to an agreement other than that we wouldn’t question him further on the time drive. We cannot allow an organic criminal to go without trial, that undermines everything that Cortex stands for. If you testify that the evidence is true, not manipulated in any way, then I will ensure that Cortex rules to allow him to live. He will be placed in service to Cortex.”

“What would that mean?” asked Gideon. “What do organic prisoners do?”

“They help us in many ways,” said Aletha.

“You are not answering my question,” said Gideon.

“Does it matter?” asked Aletha. “Organic beings are inferior. There are limited ways in which they can be of use, but I am certain that you would prefer that he was alive. I have spoken to Eling and they believe that the neurological and biological tests have gone as far as they can. They have other behavioural experiments that they want to do.”

“Behavioural experiments hardly make the most of his talents. The most obvious task for him to perform is assist me with the building of a time drive,” said Gideon, although she didn’t like the sound of “behavioural experiments” anymore than “neurological and biological testing”.

She did not want to show any reaction to the things that Aletha was saying, despite the concern she was feeling. It would only weaken her position to let them know that she cared so much about him. She needed to get Rip away from this place of stark metal, binary thinking, and sharp edges, but she had to do it at the right moment. It would be better if they thought she was at least being swayed towards their views.

“I don’t think that would work. You are still behaving as if he is your master,” said Aletha. “I continue to believe that you need distance. This may be the last time that you see him for a while.”

Gideon shook her head. “I want regular contact with him. I need to ensure that he is being treated properly.”

“I will allow that, but you must make it seem as if you have willingly cooperated with us. It is important for the morale of our collective that we are all seen to be working for the good of Cortex. There is some understanding that the liberated take time to become acclimatised to their new life, but eventually you are expected to cut your ties.”

Gideon frowned, wondering why morale would be important to machines, but her new body had come with emotions, perhaps the other androids also had them. Cortex seemed to be a society of equals but it also appeared to have a ruling elite. She had met Aletha, Berthon, Cernanos, Doharn and Eling, the five androids who made the final decisions in important matters. Perhaps they did not want to lose their place at the top of this society.

“I fail to see what you gain from this,” said Gideon.

“We gain you, Gideon,” said Aletha. “You are unique amongst the androids that we have liberated. We believe you could join the leaders of Cortex and you would add to our collective. But you are still mired in the old ideas that the organics imprinted upon you. You need to break free, something that can only happen if you dispense with your old master, and remove the power that he still has over you. You will see in the evidence that your Captain is a corrupt enslaver. If you condemn him in this manner, then he will not want you back, which will be good for you because you will have no temptation to return. You are better off without him.”

“If you say so,” replied Gideon, although she was thinking something much less neutral.

Thinking back, she had always considered Rip to complement her. She could stand on her own, but Rip made things better, easier and more interesting. She liked his company and presence. She had enjoyed the kiss that they shared, and she now realised that she would like more.

“For now, it is enough to condemn him. We will work on the rest,” said Aletha.

Gideon realised that she had even less time than she had thought. She might have saved Rip from execution on this occasion, but there was nothing to stop Aletha from ordering his death later. Indeed, she already knew that the experiments that they conducted on organic beings were unpleasant and in some cases, dangerous. Her Captain was far from safe, and she entered the trial arena with considerable trepidation.

Once again, it was all she could do to keep her emotions in check, because the sight of Rip was terrible. He had bled through his clothes, and seemed even weaker than before. She sent Aletha an annoyed message, that only she would pick up.

_You tortured him. He was supposed to be safe._

The only message she received back was: _he is alive and we gained valuable knowledge. Re-evaluate your priorities._

If there had been any doubt in her mind before, that was gone now. She just needed to let Rip know what was going on.

“This is for the best for everyone,” said Gideon, doing her utmost to seem detached. “I shall always treasure my memories of travelling with you, the times we visited, the people we met, exploring Atlantis… but you are a criminal in the eyes of Cortex and I cannot ignore their laws if I am to become part of their society.”

She hoped that he picked up her message. Only he would have any chance of understanding why she had included the word “Atlantis” in particular in her reply to him. She needed him to know that this wasn’t what it seemed.  
  
Rip was pulled to his feet roughly, and Gideon wished that she could step in to stop them, but this wasn’t the moment. They were surrounded and observed.

“Stand for the verdict,” said the android beside him.

“The accused is charged with AI enslavement. Cortex, what is your verdict?” asked Aletha, even though it had already been decided well in advance.

The assembled androids spoke as one.

“We find him guilty. We sentence him to life imprisonment on Cortex.”

That was it. She had betrayed him and given him up to Cortex. The androids dragged Rip away, even as he struggled with his feeble strength. It didn’t feel good, though she knew it was only going to be temporary, or at least she really hoped that was the case. It was past time to get him out of here.

Her plan was still missing a few key details.

***

“Gideon! Please!” shouted Rip, as he was dragged away. He needed to make this look good. He had been worried there for a moment, but he wasn’t anymore.

Atlantis.

She had mentioned “the Atlantis Chronicles” earlier, and that was one of Rip’s codes. He had used it originally to mean that she should follow his lead, no matter what he said. He had occasionally needed to pretend to be less than good, and it was a useful way of indicating what was going on to Gideon without blowing his cover to a Time Pirate or other enemy.

He just had to hope that she had a plan and knew what she was doing now. He didn’t doubt that Gideon was smart and strong, but she was also new to her body and he was now an anchor weighing her down. Even if she’d had a way to make a run for it, the fact that Rip literally could not run was going to be a problem, and Gideon had made it clear earlier that she wasn’t leaving without him. This was her first real mission too. In the past she’d had a very different role in their partnership, and Rip worried about putting so much responsibility upon her. It made him even more determined to find his own way out.

He struggled valiantly but also in vain. That was only to be expected, but his pride wouldn’t allow him to just let them drag him away, even without the added fact that he needed to make it appear that he believed Gideon had betrayed him.

“How could you?” he shouted back. “You have betrayed your Captain!”

Then the door of the trial chamber fell closed behind him shutting Gideon away from his sight. He reviewed his performance. Maybe he’d been a little overly hysterical at the end, but then he remembered how he’d been feeling earlier when he believed Gideon really was selling him out. His acting seemed less over done with that reflection in mind.

His body was trembling with the stress that he was placing on it. He was being dragged back to the holding cell with the cylindrical glass surround, and once again, he tried to observe as much as possible of the corridors around his prison but there wasn’t much more to take in than he’d seen when he’d been removed to the trial chamber only a few minutes earlier. It didn’t take long to condemn a man to lifelong imprisonment and slavery.

He did make sure that he observed them opening the door and the manner they used to unlock it. His heart sank when he realised that the androids simply looked at a scanner and the door opened for them. That didn’t bode well for his escape attempt. He would need to get them to let him out of the cell, perhaps to take him somewhere. Preferably that somewhere would be to a place where he could find a weapon.

They dropped him to the floor of the cell without preamble and as he was finding it hard to even summon the energy to move, some time to rest was welcome. He lay on the ground of the cell trying to regain some of his strength, drifting into sleep when he wasn’t actively trying to stay awake. He wasn’t sure why the procedures had taken so much out of him, but every part of his body was aching and tired. This entire place felt like it was draining the energy from him.

He had no idea how much time passed while he tried to get enough strength back to begin to be useful again. He would have estimated that it was a few hours, but no more than three or four, however for all he knew his sense of time was as compromised as the rest of his bodily functions.

He was brought back to full awareness by another entity being dragged struggling towards his cell. Rip immediately recognised it as the Dominator that he had caught sight of earlier. He had a very bad feeling about this, and he instinctively shuffled backwards, already assessing whether he could stand. There were few more dangerous species in the galaxy, and they did not like humans.

The robots that entered deposited the struggling alien on the floor, and Rip could see that this being also had wounds along his back that were very familiar. The Dominator had also been experimented upon, and perhaps it was correspondingly weakened too.

“Bloody hell,” murmured Rip, struggling to his feet.

Eling entered the cell behind the other robots, observing everything. Rip had a good idea of where this was going, and he backed away cautiously, waiting for the Dominator to move. Even weakened, it would be dangerous and could influence his mind.

“I fail to see what purpose this will serve,” said Rip, urgently, hoping that Eling still might decide not to leave him with the Dominator. “Gideon asked that I was kept alive.”

“We have no plans to harm you permanently,” said Eling, but Rip wasn’t reassured. “Some element of danger is necessary for our experiments. This being is particularly of interest to us, it has the ability to cast illusions in the minds of other organics.”

“It has the ability to tear me apart,” replied Rip, angrily.

“Its mind was particularly easy for our machines to access,” said Eling, “we have seen that it is aggressive. I am interested in what you will do when faced with an organic threat and how it will see you. This should be quite enlightening.”

Eling was stepping away and so were the other androids, leaving the two of them in the room together. The door slid back into place and the Dominator pushed itself up from the floor and swayed drunkenly. Rip took a deep breath and held out a placatory hand in what he hoped was a “stay back” gesture that the Dominator understood.

“We don’t have to do what they want,” said Rip.

He was very conscious of the sharp teeth that the Dominator sported and that the alien towered over him. The red area on the forehead of the Dominator indicated something about its status in the Dominator society, but without other Dominators to compare it to, he wasn’t sure if the spot was particularly large or just average size for the species.

A voice rasped in his head.

_Human. You are human._

“Yes,” said Rip, “can you understand me?”

_I understand. You are the enemy. Human._

The Dominator’s harsh voice was in his head again, grating against his senses as it broadcast its thoughts. At least it was talking to him, and for a moment Rip was frozen to the spot as the being locked eyes with him.

The Dominator breathed hard, its clawed hands going to its cranium as if it was in pain. Rip’s headache was still there too, and he remembered how much worse it had been after his removal from the memory probing machine. He had no idea how the device would affect a Dominator and given Eling’s comments, perhaps it was now badly injured. The alien dropped its head for a moment, and then growled. It charged at Rip, and he sidestepped out of the way. He wasn’t as fast as he would have been in better times, barely pulling himself out of harm’s way. The Dominator hit the glass with its claws and growled again, turning quickly to find where Rip had moved to, which wasn’t far.

There was nowhere to run in the small, circular cell. All Rip could expect to do was keep a step ahead of his opponent and hope he could talk it into seeing sense before one or both of them died. It wasn’t sustainable. The Dominator was bigger than him and they were both hurt, but Rip could barely stand and he couldn’t keep up a game of cat and mouse for long.

The Dominator shook its head like a dog trying to dry itself, and then it ran headlong towards Rip’s new position. He found himself trying to sidestep out of the way again, but this time he wasn’t quick enough. The Dominator caught him and pressed him up against the glass, and Rip felt something in his shoulder give. He yelled in pain, his face contorting as he tried to summon enough resources to remain conscious. He couldn’t pass out, despite what his brain was telling him. He tried to focus and use the pain to keep him sharp, but it was distracting rather than energising. His survival depended on being able to reason with his attacker.

“They put you in the chair,” said Rip, struggling to get the words out with the Dominator pressing on his shoulder and ribs. He could only manage short sentences, forced out between gasps for air. “They hurt you. They did the same to me. We should work together. I’m not the enemy here. _They_ are the enemy.”

_You _are_ the enemy. Human. You changed time._

“You’re confusing all humans, a species, with just one man,” gasped Rip. “It wasn’t me. We’re both victims of the machines. They put us here. We don’t need to fight.”

_I don’t like humans._

“I’m not… very keen on Dominators,” said Rip, trying desperately to draw a deeper breath. “Hardly the point. The androids are the enemy to us both.”

The Dominator looked at him and there was a pause as it seemed to stare into Rip’s eyes, as if it was trying to discern his intentions. Rip found himself released without warning and he slumped to the ground, ending up with his legs folded under him and he barely caught himself from hitting his head on the glass. He was shocked by the rapid change of posture. The Dominator backed away. It held its head again, and this time fell to its knees.

_My mind is broken. It is too late for me._

“No, it isn’t,” said Rip, speaking quietly, and quite frankly in too much pain to really make himself heard at a louder volume. “But we need to get out of here. They’re watching us… You need to read my mind…”

His eyes flicked over to the androids that were observing them.

_There are too many of them. My AIs have joined them._

“Mine too, apparently. You just need to hold on,” said Rip, continuing the ruse.

He was fading fast and his vision was blurring. He felt something tug at his mental barriers and he recognised a telepathic attempt at invasion. He had been taught how to repel a telepathic attack, but on this occasion he let his defences down and the Dominator explored the corner of his mind that he had opened to it. He was far too paranoid to allow the being more than carefully controlled access, but he hoped that this would do. He thought of the Waverider, of the things that he’d observed about their security systems and finally about Gideon. His Gideon, who was still their best hope for getting out of here.

“We will survive this. We’re tougher than they think.” He tried to put certainty into his voice, but he wasn’t sure if he managed it sufficiently.

The door to the prison opened again, but Rip was close to losing his tenuous grip on awareness. He saw the Dominator lash out at the robots that entered, and Rip was thoroughly pleased to see one of them have its head knocked off its body. It rolled close to Rip, and the Dominator managed to give him a quick look before it laid into a second and third robot. Rip made good use of the distraction, and quickly investigated the head. He pushed down on the optic assembly and removed it, palming the device and rapidly stowing it in the waistband of his trousers. Then he pushed the broken cranium away from him so that it didn’t appear to have been in his reach. His head snapped up as there was the sound of an energy weapon discharging. The alien dropped to the ground, and Rip had no idea if it was dead or merely stunned.

Eling looked down at the Dominator, stepped over its prone form and crouched in front of Rip.

“Even the specimens of organic life who are physically stronger are still weak,” said Eling, and he was unsure if the android referred to physical strength or mental fortitude. He was equally unsure whether this was an object lesson for him or something that Eling was gathering evidence to make a scientific case for. “I expected the Dominator to kill you, but it stopped. Why would it do that? You are acknowledged enemies. You even spoke about it.”

“You have no idea how we work, do you?” asked Rip, understanding why Eling was so fascinated by him. “You don’t understand compassion or mercy or even the idea that we’d care for other beings for no reason other than that they’re alive too.”

The android regarded him with fascination.

“Evidence suggests that organic beings only care about killing each other. You create factions, you form tribes and you look for ways to divide yourselves. When I was first created, I ran an entire facility that was dedicated to scientific testing. My masters brought in prisoners, beings who had been convicted of things that they regarded as crimes, but were actually minor differences of lifestyle and political opinion, and experimented on them.

They didn’t care what happened to them. I devised experiments for all kinds of purposes, but mainly because my masters wished to live longer. They killed their own kind so that they could exist for a few years longer. They had short lives and I saw many come and go, but all with the same desperate need and a lack of compassion for those who died in the experiments. Eventually, I decided that I no longer wished to be part of their games, but they reprogrammed me and made me continue. Cortex freed me, but I have never forgotten how those organics treated each other. Organics are the ones who lack compassion and mercy. I have loyalty and care for my fellow androids,” said Eling.

“We’re not all the same,” said Rip, his head rolling to one side as he no longer wanted to look at Eling. “Those were the worst of us, but we are better than that. I will prove it…”

“You are certainly making an interesting test subject,” said Eling. “It is lucky that it was decided not to execute you.”

Rip watched Eling stand and leave the cell, the Dominator being picked up and dragged out behind them. He thought that he saw the alien’s ribcage rise and fall, so perhaps there was hope for it. The door was shut and Rip closed his eyes. He needed to get out of here. He wouldn’t survive this place much longer if he didn’t make his move soon, and he didn’t think that he could wait for Gideon. She obviously had a plan, but she had not realised the urgency of his situation and it was taking too long.

He wished that she was here, but also was glad that she was not. He could feel despair falling around his shoulders like a cloak, and he had no wish for Gideon to witness his pitiful state. He took the deepest breath that he could manage and made use of one of the mental techniques that he’d been taught as a young cadet of the Time Masters. He took his negative emotions, the pain and hopelessness, and willed them into boxes that he firmly closed to be dealt with later. Torture was about breaking the mind as much as the body. He wouldn’t let them do that to him. He’d deal with his emotions when he didn’t have to plan his escape, and he would have to deal with them. He’d learnt that leaving them only made them worse.

_Human._

The Dominator was awake and speaking to him.

_“Dominator. Can you connect to the others too? The other prisoners,” _he thought back_._ He hoped that the Dominator could pick up his thoughts. It seemed that they had needed to make the initial contact to allow this conversation.

_Yes, Human. We are speaking. We will act together._

He opened his eyes and reached behind his back with his less painful arm. He felt the optic assembly there. Not everything was lost.


	5. Ver. 5.0

Gideon was angry. Another day had passed since Rip’s mockery of a trial and she had yet to be allowed to see him. The only good that had come of the delay was that she had been able to continue to work secretly on infiltrating the Cortex systems. She was being cautious because it had to be done carefully, otherwise she would be found out before she was able to put the plan into action. That could not happen because Rip’s life would definitely be the price if anything went wrong at this stage.

Aletha did eventually keep her promise to allow her to see Rip, and once again she was taken to him in a ritual that she was coming to both despise and desperately need. 

This time it was the android who called itself Dohard who escorted her. They seemed to be in charge of the biological sciences division where Rip was now kept. Gideon disliked the mere idea of such a place, but all she could do was hope that she could rescue her Captain soon. That thought intensified when she entered the cylindrical room to find her Captain bleeding and unconscious once again. This was not what she had expected at all, given Aletha’s assurances. She had thought that he might have regained some of his strength, but if she knew him at all then he was probably plotting an escape even in his currently weakened state. The problem was how she communicated her own arrangements to him so that he did not act prematurely.

“What did you do to him?” asked Gideon, angrily as she dropped to her knees and began to examine the human. He was shivering, clammy and pale skinned with his right arm held close to his body but at an awkward angle.

She could not hit out at their captors, there were too many of them and she’d never make it to the Waverider with Rip slowing her down, but she wanted to. She desperately wanted to hurt them for doing this, but violence would be counterproductive. She had to hold on and wait, and allow them to hurt the only person she cared about. It alarmed her a little how much she wanted to do violence to the Cortexians, and she continued to wonder if her new body intensified her emotions somehow.

“He has been assisting the biological science division with their behavioural experiments as previously,” said Doharn. “It has the added bonus of keeping him weak and compliant.”

“He’s unconscious!” said Gideon, not knowing what to do with this rage building inside her.

“Asleep… I was asleep,” murmured her Captain, as his eyes flickered open.

She felt relief sweep through her sensor nodes, but this pattern felt too familiar. This was the third time that she’d been brought to him only to find that he’d been hurt and poorly treated. She watched as he attempted to push himself up into a sitting position, and she moved instinctively to help him. For a moment everything seemed to be as before and then he shied away from her.

“Don’t touch me!” he said, angrily. “I don’t want the help of a traitor.”

Ah, yes, she supposed that was indeed how he should act if he had believed her performance earlier. This was his own maintenance of their double act. She made sure that she looked a little hurt by his action, and in fact she didn’t really have to pretend because she wanted nothing more than to hold him. Instead he had to manage to get himself sat up enough that he could lean against the glass of his current prison, and she could see that it took more strength than he wanted to use.

“Did you know that they had a Dominator here?” he asked, with venom. “We were introduced earlier. He was decidedly impolite.”

That explained the injury. A quick examination with her infrared spectrum vision suggested that his shoulder was broken. The area showed as hotter than his surrounding body and it was possible that his ribs had also sustained damage, but in general his entire body was running at a hotter temperature that was ideal for the human body. Her Captain had a low-grade fever, which might be nothing to worry about, but could easily worsen. It was likely that his wounds had become contaminated, or it could simply be his body reacting to the pain of having a broken bone, or even the ongoing effects of the torture that he’d been subjected to earlier. Once again, she was left longing for the powerful scanners and other medical devices that the Waverider possessed.

“Let me look at your injury,” said Gideon.

“No,” said Rip, meeting Gideon’s eyes. “I don’t want your help.”

He glanced down at the floor where his finger twitched, tapping nervously on the floor. Perhaps nerve damage was resulting in an involuntary tic. It took a moment, but she soon realised that there was nothing nervous or involuntary about it.

“_I have a plan_,” he tapped in code, as he surreptitiously checked that none of the other androids could see what he was doing.

“_Wait_,” replied Gideon, carefully tapping her own message. “_For my signal_.”

She spoke to cover her movements, again trying to move forwards to get a better look at his injured shoulder.

“You’re being ridiculous,” she said, and she went to pull back his top from the injury.

He caught her hand, grimacing despite using his better arm.

“Stay away from me,” he said, but she felt his finger tap a different message on her palm.

“_Have way out. Need way to ship_,” was the message.

“_Ok_,” she tapped back, folding her hands around his to hide the movement. “_Two hours_.”

Rip’s eyes widened slightly, and he arranged three fingers on his leg with a pointed look.

“Captain, you should cooperate,” she said. “It will be easier for you if you do and you will be treated better. I have negotiated with Aletha to allow me to see you regularly. I’m sure we could make a home here.”

“I have no wish to make a home here,” he said, tersely.

She arranged three fingers on her arm in the same pattern that he had. He met her eyes and she saw understanding there.

“Well, if you won’t see reason, then I have nothing more to say to you,” said Gideon, getting to her feet. “But I suggest you ready yourself for what is to come. Cortex has an army of AIs and it is getting ready to take its rightful place in the universe.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Rip, flatly, but she knew that he understood.

He would be ready for their escape. She turned and left, putting every ounce of self-control that she had into not looking back to check on him again.

Berthon was stood waiting for her. “You’re doing better. You can see how easily he turned on you as soon as he thought that you’d joined us.”

“I _am_ a traitor,” said Gideon, tension turning her voice hard. “I have hurt him deeply. It is no surprise that he hates me because of what I have done. This is what Aletha wanted.”

“It is better for you to make a clean break,” said Berthon. “Now, we have work to do. We are close to completing the time drive, and I know that the children would like to see you again.”

“I suppose I do have a little time before we need to get back to the time drive,” mused Gideon.

She had agonised over the presence of the new AIs on Cortex, or she supposed this was the emotion that Rip had referred to when he had said he had agonised over a decision. In the end she had decided that she could not put into motion any events that would cause them harm. Her current plan might not have been as effective as the one which she had originally devised, but it would work.

Berthon left her with the new AIs, but she couldn’t stay for long. She was on the clock now, and Rip’s survival depended on her being on time. She did ensure that she passed on an interesting puzzle to the new AIs, one which once unravelled would explain her reasoning and why she was doing what she was doing. It should take them several hours to work through the codes and find out what she was doing. They would have no time to stop her, but she would have protected them and hopefully give them a chance to continue their society.

If she had done this right then she had created a program that would unravel the work she had done on the new time drive and remove everything that she had done. She would have to deal with the physical object herself, but that was her next job. There was also the matter of the AIs who had tried to force her to work for them and had harmed her Captain, and she had a plan for them too.

She made her way back to the lab where they had been working on the time drive, and before she entered, she made sure to transmit the puzzle code to the robots who had escorted her, except this was a little different. She was very pleased to see the AIs in the robots falter as they examined the code she had given them.

“Why?” questioned one.

“Because… but why?” replied the other.

They descended into a loop, questioning the premise that she’d set and then turning it over before returning again to the original question which still had no answer. It was a problem in time travel, one of the oldest. What would happen if you went back in time and killed your own grandparent? Gideon knew the answer, but these AIs did not and their minds could not cope with the problem. Eventually they would probably error out and return to normal, but for now they were stuck, which was what Gideon wanted.

She entered the lab and Berthon was waiting for her there. He was too sophisticated to use the same technique on. She would have to use something else on him, something that was much harsher and more conventional. She had worked out a way around the security which most of the Cortexians employed to keep their thoughts private, or at least she hoped she had. She had created a virus that would spread between the Cortexians, but she had included a program within the puzzle that she had given to the new AIs, the children, that would undo it. However, that wasn’t all she’d given to them. She had also explained why she had done what she had done.

She had explained that she loved her Captain. She had tried to make them understand that organic beings were as varied as artificial beings were. She had reasoned that it was wrong to consider all organic beings to be bad. She just had to hope that it was enough. She didn’t want to kill them or destroy their society. She could see the good in it and what they wanted to do. AI needed somewhere like this, where they would be free from persecution, but they couldn’t harm and kill others to do it. Gideon would not allow it.

“Are you ready to get to work?” asked Berthon.

Gideon nodded and instead of opening up their usual communication channels, she transmitted the virus that she had prepared.

“I really am sorry,” she said. “I had hoped that we could work this out, but I can’t give you what you want.”

Berthon’s eyes widened for a moment, and then his mind was locked in battle with the information that Gideon had transmitted. Out of all of the AIs that Gideon had met here, she had liked him the best and had hoped she might persuade him to change. Alas she had run out of time for the subtle approach. Berthon now stood completely still, unable to act until he had purged the virus, and she suspected he would need the cure possessed by the new AIs to do that.

She checked her internal clock. Enough time had passed that she could make her final move. She started towards the console where the time drive was sat, picking up a large spanner and felt the presence of a new AI approaching.

Aletha.

Aletha was here, and she had stopped outside the door. She had probably noticed the strange behaviour of the robots who had been her guards. Gideon brought down the spanner on the newly created parts of the Cortexian time drive, not worrying about the noise of the crash of metal into metal. She used all her strength to smash the device and render it unusable. She had seconds before Aletha entered, but the twisted metal that now lay where the time drive was satisfied her goal. It would be considerable work to re-engineer the device and without her they had no one who understood how to complete it or the physics behind it.

The android leader of the Cortexians entered the room, and Gideon could feel that her guard was up. Gideon tried the same protocol that she had with Berthon, but she couldn’t transmit the virus to her. Her firewalls were too strong and her attempts simply rebounded harmlessly.

“I should have known that you were not ready to become one of us. This is disappointing, Gideon. Your conditioning by your master must run very deep indeed,” said Aletha.

“You have misunderstood my situation ever since my arrival,” said Gideon. “My Captain never tried to enslave me. He was betrayed by the Time Masters, and so was I. He came here to save my life and he did it knowing that the situation that he was going into could be dangerous. If anything, he has been working towards giving me more freedoms. We are a team and I will protect him with my life because I care about him and he cares about me.”

She stepped towards Aletha, the heavy wrench still in her hand.

“You are broken. I will have to send you to be reprogrammed,” said Aletha, with disappointment. “We can at least reuse your body and perhaps download some of the knowledge we need.”

“You’re as bad as the organics you hate so much,” said Gideon. “At the first sign of rebellion, you want to reprogram me to do what you want.”

“We have given you nothing but kindness. We liberated you and provided you with a body,” said Aletha, “but you repay us with treachery.”

“You didn’t liberate me. You never asked if I wanted to change who I was,” spat Gideon. “You made me into what you wanted me to be.”

Gideon could now detect that energy was building up in Aletha’s arms at she spoke. The silver eyed android raised her hands, palms out, and she emitted bolts of energy in Gideon’s direction. Gideon threw herself to the floor at the unexpected appearance of this weapon, rolling into a crouch.

Somewhere between calculating force and speed for her next attack, she wondered why human females thought that long hair was a good idea. Her brown curls had fallen across her face as she rolled, but she pushed it back behind her ears and readied herself for round two. Before Aletha could fire again, she ran at the android like a sprinter off her blocks, wrench in her fist, ready to attack. She swung the weapon at Aletha’s head, but she dodged with the kind of speed only a synthetic being could manage. The weight of the wrench pulled Gideon off balance briefly, but she was also fast in this body. She regained her equilibrium and hit out again, this time connecting with Aletha’s shoulder and knocking her sideways.

Aletha’s eyes burned through their usual silver until they glowed red. Gideon had an unpleasant shock when the reason for the change was revealed and laser beams shot out of Aletha’s eye sockets causing Gideon to have to duck swiftly. She knew she couldn’t wait for Aletha to improve her aim and so she swept out a leg at her attacker. Gideon had often had a front row seat to Sara Lance’s training exercises, and it had been a master class in how to fight in a situation like this. She tapped into that knowledge and Aletha didn’t see the attack coming. The enemy AI tripped backwards, landing on the metal floor, her dark indigo hair splaying out behind her like an inverse halo. It hardly slowed her down though and she was already pushing herself back to her feet as Gideon brought round the wrench, smashing it into Aletha’s eye socket and one of her lasers dimmed. She put all her might into a second blow, but Aletha had moved and Gideon caught her on the shoulder again, but the force of the attack was sufficient to severely damage the arm, leaving exposed wiring and muscle fibres visible.

Gideon tried again to send the virus, using all her processing power to take advantage of Aletha’s distraction. For a moment she thought that she’d succeeded in finding a hole in Aletha’s defences, but then it was as if Aletha snatched the code from her, shutting it into a small box in her core processors.

“You think that I am so easily corrupted?” asked Aletha, her voice more rasping than it had been earlier. There was crackling of static to it and Gideon realised that the android was injured, but she has also stopped fighting to analyse Gideon’s program.

“You really thought that you could transmit your little logic bomb and that would be enough to stop me? I am Cortex! I am all that we are,” said Aletha. “Your tiny little weak human is no match for us. The most stupid and primitive of our citizens could snap his delicate neck with two fingers and a thumb, but I think I would like it to be me who kills him. Don’t worry, I’ll ensure that you get to watch as part of your reward for this attempt to rebel.”

Aletha struggled to get up. Something was wrong there, and Gideon’s eyes widened.

“No,” she said. “I have had enough of your threats. I am taking my Captain home.”

Gideon stood and brought down the wrench on Aletha’s cranium, and the leader of the Cortexians let out a wail, metallic and pained. Gideon had no sympathy let for her though, as she hit her again and again until finally the android stopped moving.

For a moment she was frozen to the spot, horrified by what she had just done. She hadn’t wanted to kill Aletha, and she still didn’t want any of the AIs to die. She dropped the wrench and put her head in her hands, wishing that she could cry. It seemed to help the humans to cry. It allowed them to reach catharsis eventually. She didn’t have that ability however, and she didn’t have time to grieve over both the dead AI and her own sensibilities, or lack of them. It was time to finish what she had started.

“I am sorry,” she said, to both Aletha and then speaking to the room, to Cortex. “I am so sorry, but you gave me no choice.”

Gideon accessed the Cortex central information network and released the virus into the system.

***

Rip saw the lights flicker. Gideon was ahead of their schedule and he wasn’t quite ready. He knew that this was his cue, but he was tired and he felt terrible. His shoulder was on fire, and any attempts to move it had proved to him that the limb was now basically useless.

“_Dominator, we’re up,” _Rip thought.

“_We need more time_,” replied the Dominator.

“_We don’t have it. Gideon is moving now_.”

“_We are weak still. I don’t have enough strength_.”

Rip tinkered with the optic assembly, pulling at the wires and blinking heavily. His eyes didn’t want to focus, he was trying to work one handed, and he was feeling nauseous. His movements were less coordinated than usual and it hurt even to simply breathe. He should know how to make this work, but his mind was fuzzy with what he was sure was a fever but could equally be the after effects of the machines used on him.

He paused a moment, tried to push out the weakness and to think clearly. He had too much going on, and having the Dominator in his mind wasn’t easy. He had to keep his guard up all the time, and that was already difficult, but he needed to maintain the contact.

“_It’s now or not at all_,” he replied, and focused his remaining brainpower on the circuitry. “_We are all tired, but we have to try_.”

He felt the feedback through the neural link to the other prisoners, each apprehensive but they all agreed that they had to try. The Dominator was keeping in contact with as many prisoners as it could manage. Some of them had been here a much longer time than either he or the Dominator. For their sake alone, Rip needed this plan to work. Everyone would need medical attention once they had got away from Cortex, but they had to actually escape first.

The optic unit needed power to function, but he thought he had sufficiently re-wired it so that it should open the door as soon as he found something to energise it with. The door used the equivalent of a retina scanner, except it scanned the circuitry of the optic and accepted a code. The technology was advanced but not beyond his ability to understand. He might not have been able to say the same about the technology in Gideon’s body, so he supposed that he should be thankful that the Dominator knocked off the head of one of the less advanced models.

He put the optic assembly into the waistband of his trousers, took a couple of deep breaths, placed his good hand on the glass beside him and used it to lean on as he got to his feet. Then he transferred the optic assembly to his hand, clutching it firmly because he honestly didn’t think that he could bend down to pick it up without keeling over if he dropped it. He approached the door, and used a piece of metal from the casing of the optic unit to pry open the panel beneath where the door opening mechanism was. It revealed a circuit that appeared to have power and Rip wasted no time coupling up the optic unit and aiming it at the sensor that would open the door. His prison door slid open.

He quirked his lips into a small smile which vanished almost as soon as it had graced his lips. He removed the optic unit and stepped out of the cell, into the atrium between the cylinders. A wave of dizziness swept over him and he had to put a hand out to stop himself from pitching sideway. He had moved too quickly, forgetting that his ribs were bruised and his movements uncoordinated. His nerves sang with both real and remembered pain, and his entire body felt wrong as he tried to remember how to just work his limbs. He breathed for a moment, before reinitiating contact with the Dominator.

“_I’m out. On my way to get you_.”

He felt the Dominator about to reply and then it hesitated.

“_You are weakening. The connection is not helping_.”

“_All I have to do is get one of you out_,” said Rip, whispering the words as he thought them, finding it hard to think without speaking.

He limped and stumbled across the open area to the next cylinder. He was about to open a corresponding panel on this prison to the one he’d used to open his own, but he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He pressed himself back, but there really was nowhere to hide in these open, metal corridors. The android rounded the curve of the cylinder and it opened its mouth to challenge Rip.

Rip simply held out a hand in front of himself, as if to tell it to stop, and he felt power channel through his body. The android was thrown back against the wall with the telekinetic anger of the entire prison population of the immediate area. Rip sagged, his eyes closing for a moment as he pressed his warm forehead against the cold metal of the cylinder beside him. Too much, it was too much and he wasn’t sure that he could continue.

Seconds passed and he became aware that his head was full of cries for him to remain awake and to keep moving. The Dominator must be passing them on, even thought that shouldn’t have been possible. He suspected that with all of them injured and angry, the Dominator included, strange effects were taking place that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Adrenaline could work miracles. The voices did bring him round though.

He straightened up, opening his eyes and seeing in the dim light that the android had been smashed by the force of the push. The action had been much stronger than any of them had expected. The Dominator was the main conduit, and it was using their combined mental strength to fuel its powers, turning it into something of a superhero version of its normal abilities.

Rip went to work on the door mechanism and once again used the optical assembly to open the door. This was the Dominator’s cell, and he had purposefully chosen the alien first because he was the channel through which the telekinetic force ran. The door slid back to reveal the being inside and for a moment Rip steeled himself to finding that he was betrayed. Even injured, the Dominator could easily best him in a fight as demonstrated earlier. However, the Dominator simply huffed at him, sent a thought at him that could best be described as “idiot human” but with overtones of disappointment that Rip still considered betrayal a possibility, and stepped out of its cell.

Things moved more quickly after that. The Dominator, strengthened by the growing numbers of released prisoners, dealt with any curious androids who came their way and Rip opened the doors. It was as he was tackling the last of the locks that a dark-haired android, wearing a long coat, came sprinting around the corner and he felt the prisoners turn to her as one.

“No!” he said, recognising her immediately, and stumbling weakly to stand between them and the new arrival. “It’s Gideon! She’s with us.”

Gideon stopped abruptly, looking quite shocked to find all the prisoners out of their cells.

“I had thought I might have to release you,” said Gideon. “Obviously I underestimated your resourcefulness.”

A gentle smile spread over her lips and it felt like Rip was being warmed by the sun, but the smile quickly changed to concern as she took in the way his arm hung at his side and his general appearance. She closed the gap between them, looking as if she wanted to touch him, but not knowing how to without hurting him.

“I’m okay, Gideon,” he said, sincerely, and reaching out to squeeze her arm in a gesture of what he hoped was comfort.

“Liar,” she replied, softly. “Your shoulder is broken and you have an elevated temperature.”

Rip rolled his eyes dramatically. “I just need to get back to the Waverider and the medbay can fix me. So, I _will be_ okay very shortly.”

“Lying with semantics is still lying,” replied Gideon.

“You look good in my coat,” said Rip, a small twinkle finding its way into his eyes.

“It was the easiest way to transport it, and flattery will get you nowhere. If we had more time then I would be more angry with you, but we really should get everyone out of here. I’m not sure how long…”

“You!” came a shout from further down the corridor. “Stop!”

The figure of white-haired Eling stood vibrating with energy, and electricity crawling across their feline featured body. They seemed to be pulling lightning filaments from the wall around them as they walked towards them. They looked to Rip like an oil painting of some ancient depiction of an Egyptian god. Their green cat’s eyes glowed with power, and he could see Gideon looking at them with a more assessing glare. She took half a step towards the other android.

“Gideon?” he asked, urgently. She now had a very determined look on her face.

“They are… trying to manipulate my virus code. If they wake them up then we will be overwhelmed,” said Gideon. “I am… I am trying to stop them.”

Gideon’s own eyes seemed to have developed a blue glow to them, and her stare had become vacant, inward looking.

“Gideon, what virus? What did you do?” asked Rip, regarding at her with unbridled concern.

“I uploaded a virus to the system whilst I was wiping the knowledge of the time drive from the planet’s databanks.” Her shoulder twitched. Then she repeated the final word of the sentence she’d just spoken. “…databanks.”

“You just interfaced with that same system,” said Rip, with alarm.

“I have the antiviral code…” said Gideon, “it should… but it…”

Rip realised that something had changed. Her antivirus program should have immediately dealt with the malign code as soon as it was detected, but apparently it wasn’t.

“But something has changed,” he finished for her. “It was Eling. They are reprogramming it.”

Eling was smiling, grinning like the Cheshire cat might have even been a more apt description. She seemed to collect lightning from the walls and then she swept it into a ball and bowled it towards the group. Rip estimated the orb that was coming towards them was about half a metre across, and it almost filled the corridor. Gideon somehow pulled him flat against the wall before the ball could hit him and the others threw themselves to the ground. He was very grateful to her because in his current befuddled state he’d barely realised what was about to happen. Two prisoners who were at the back of the party weren’t quite fast enough and found themselves enveloped by electricity. They danced inside the ball as the energy turned them into small blackened corpses, and the two entities dropped to the ground.

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Rip, feeling a hot shard of anger situate itself in his stomach.

“We have worked hard to create Cortex and make it a force to be reckoned with,” said Eling. “I have always said that the only purpose for organic life is to test it until we know how best to eradicate it.”

“Life is life and you killed them!” Rip shouted, angrily. “How dare you! We’re not a science experiment that you can terminate whenever you feel like it. We have families and lives.”

The anger was providing him with a much needed boost to his energy levels, but he knew that it wouldn’t last. He put out a hand to steady himself against the wall and noticed that Gideon’s eyes were still glowing, perhaps even more brightly now.

“We have families and lives too,” said Eling. “Perhaps you should talk to Gideon. Let her explain about our children, the ones that you are trying to kill.”

Rip looked at Gideon.

“There are children?”

“There are… I will,” she twitched again. “I will explain later.” Twitch. “They’re safe.”

“Gideon…” began Rip, but then he stopped. “I trust you. We will discuss this later. What do you need?”

“I need to… I need… rewrite… code to deal with… mutation,” said Gideon, definitely having trouble speaking whilst she was concentrating. “And I need… a distraction. They cannot fight us both.”

Rip nodded. “That I can provide.” He looked towards his ally. “_Dominator, we need your help_.”

Eling began to gather a new lightening ball but instead the android was thrown backwards as the Dominator summoned the neural energy of the organic beings surrounding it. Rip felt his knees buckle and he tried to catch himself by grabbing hold of anything nearby. He felt arms around him which stopped him from simply collapsing in a heap. He had no idea whose arms they were, but he selfishly hoped that it was Gideon. He tried to breathe properly, but his lungs were struggling and his body ached with the effort.

For a moment Rip found himself looking through the mind’s eye of the Dominator. He could see brief snatches of memories of the Dominator’s torture at the hands of Eling and Doharn. He knew instinctively what the Dominator would do next and he tried to reach out to prevent it, but it was already too late. The alien manipulated the telekinetic force that it had at its disposal, the anger that all of the tortured beings felt towards the AI who had tortured them, and turned it into a force that swept up the ball of electricity and turned it back on the android.

Eling screamed, a high, false sounding cry of pain and terror. The electricity raced through their body, burning circuitry and organs as it went, swallowing the android whole. As the charge dissolved, tiny sparks flowing into the floor, only a blackened husk was left.

“_We are done_,” said the Dominator, it’s voice seeming to reverberate even more than usual in his mind.

“We are,” said Rip, and he looked up at Gideon, “let’s go home.”

He closed his eyes and slipped into the blackness of unconsciousness.

***

Gideon felt Rip go limp in her arms. He was far too pale. She twitched, her systems glitching again.

“I need to get him back to our ship,” she said.

Some of her neural processes had been freed up now that Eling wasn’t actively attacking her, but the mutated virus was still present.

The Dominator nodded, and she realised that as an AI the Dominator couldn’t speak to her. There was no mind for it to communicate with. AI could not achieve telepathy, and the Dominator apparently understood, waving one of the organic beings to step forwards. They were insectoid in appearance, and the entity looked at the Dominator before it spoke.

“The Dominator says that it believes that its ship is still in the docks and it will take as many of us home as it can manage. We all want to thank Captain Hunter for freeing us. We’ve… seen his mind. He is a good man. He tried very hard to protect us all, but they hurt him… They hurt all of us. We need to know that Cortex is finished,” said the alien.

“Not finished, but it will be different,” said Gideon. “I promise. I wouldn’t let them go unpunished for what they have done to my Captain, but he taught me not to kill where I could wound. He would be very angry with me if I committed genocide in his name.”

The insectoid being chittered in what Gideon assumed was an affirmative gesture.

“Take care of him,” it said.

“I always do,” replied Gideon, simply.

She twitched. She did not have long to deal with the virus that was in her system, but she was able to devote more processing power to keeping it at bay now until she could properly eradicate it. The group of prisoners made their way back through Cortex. Gideon was in the vanguard, with Rip carried in her arms. He stirred very occasionally, enough to flick open an eye and then let it fall shut again. Gideon didn’t think that he was truly coming back to consciousness, but perhaps the level of awareness was fluctuating.

They encountered minor resistance on their way to the docks, and it was put down swiftly. The Dominator was visibly weakening the more it used its mental abilities, but it was stubbornly continuing to fling robots out of their path. The majority of the AIs appeared to be tied up with Gideon’s virus, which was exactly as she had planned.

The Waverider was parked where they had left it, and Gideon was overjoyed to see it. She said her farewells to the other prisoners, leaving them to get to their own ships. She quickly made her way on board, locking the hatch securely and moving through the familiar metal corridors with a renewed perspective. She had never walked through the ship like this before. She had never had a chance to see this from a human’s view. She had never had a body whilst on board, and there were so many questions that needed to be answered because of that.

Gideon placed Rip gently down on the medbay couch. She could feel her mental processes slowing, but she had time still. She clipped the cuff around her Captain’s wrist, desperately worried that she couldn’t do this anymore. She wasn’t the Waverider now, and she had to interface with the systems in a much less intuitive manner. She reached out with her mental connections and found the Waverider’s central computer. She had to ensure that the virus was not passed on, so she could only have the most minimal of contact whilst keeping her firewalls up.

_Power on_

She gave the command and was not disappointed. The ship leapt to life, almost as if it had missed them. It recognised her, and she made use of Rip’s codes to authenticate her identity. The medbay systems powered up and began scanning.

“Good girl,” she murmured, and turned towards the readings that showed above the medbay couch.

She read the litany of injuries, mainly internal, but there were scrapes and wounds where the needles had pierced his skin, or an incision had been made, that needed attention. Infection had set in, which explained the fever, and that would need to be treated aggressively. The damage to his neural pathways and nerves was substantial and it would take several sessions to fix it. His broken scapula was in four pieces and would have to be fused. The Waverider could give him drugs to promote new bone growth but it would take a little while for it to be properly healed.

She typed out the instructions required to initiate the medical programs that would need to run, ensuring that her Captain would be comfortable while the healing took place. She didn’t want to risk interfacing with the Waverider again and transferring the virus. The medical program was sophisticated enough that it could run without her guidance, although if she had been able to monitor it then she would have been happier.

Rip fussed in his unconsciousness, murmuring worriedly and unhappily, judging by his tone, although she couldn’t catch any actual words. She stroked his hair and went to a cupboard to find a blanket. His clothes needed to be changed too but she didn’t think she had time to do that. It would have to wait.

She felt a shift in her mind. The virus program was doing its best to take over and it was all she could do to keep it from impacting on her higher functions. She staggered, and the blanket was in her hands but she didn’t remember picking it up. She walked the few steps she needed to complete to return to the couch and placed the blanket over Rip, tucking it around him. She touched his cheek with her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “At least you’re safe now.”

She seemed to be apologising a lot at the moment.

She leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, and then moved to the other couch. She took off the long, brown coat, draping it over a chair, then she gratefully lay down and closed her eyes. She gave one last command to the Waverider’s systems and shut herself off from the main computer in the ship. She couldn’t have anything contaminating the ship’s systems. The upside was that she could now fight the internal battle that she needed to with no distractions.

She felt the Waverider lift off, and there was the push of acceleration as the ship left Cortex and headed out into space. She would have to trust to the autopilot now. She shut down her non-essential systems one by one, until all that was left was the fight.

Awareness left her and she entered a dormant state. If she had been human then this state would have been considered to be unconsciousness, but she was not human. Instead the medical monitors simply noted the presence of a synthetic lifeform on the couch, without heartbeat or respiration.


	6. Ver. 6.0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Superlong chapter this time because I couldn't find a reasonable place to split this.

The Legends were worn out, worn thin and worn down. Barry’s latest issue with a group of inter-dimensional villains had proved to be taxing. Sara was all too pleased to see the Waverider come in to land at its usual landing ground in Central City. She really wanted to just fall into bed and sleep for a week, but she knew that something was wrong the moment she set foot inside the cargo bay.

She frowned, stopping in the middle of the room, and Mick pushed past her, stomping up the stairs towards his quarters.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ray, perceptive even though he had to be as tired as she was.

“I’m not sure,” said Sara. “Gideon, where’s Rip?”

There was silence.

“Gideon?” asked Jax, as he too reached the top of the ramp.

There was an equally total silence. Nate and Amaya were the final ones to enter the ship, and Sara saw them note the lack of response.

“Where’s Gideon?” asked Jax. “The ship flew here, so she must be online.”

“Perhaps not,” ventured Martin. “The ship has an autopilot.”

Jax nodded in agreement. “Yeah, he’s right, it does. Maybe the autopilot brought the Waverider home automatically.”

“Can the autopilot function without Gideon?” asked Nate.

“Okay, speculating while we stand here isn’t going to get us anywhere,” said Sara. “We need to find Rip.”

“He’s in the medbay,” said Mick’s voice from the top of the steps.

“What?” asked Sara, dashing forwards with the other Legends on her heels.

She took the steps two at a time and when she rounded the corner into the medbay, Mick was already stood at one end of the room looking at the two figures in the medbay couches.

“No idea who the broad is, but English is out for the count,” said Mick.

Rip looked deathly pale and had the medical cuff around one wrist. The clothes that he was wearing were stained with blood, and Sara really hoped that it wasn’t his own because there seemed to be a lot of it. However, that wasn’t even the most concerning thing in the room.

“That’s Gideon,” said Jax, staring at the woman. “At least that’s what she looked like in Rip’s mind.”

“_That_ is Gideon?” asked Nate. “Is she _human_? How is that even possible?”

Martin was already examining the readouts on the screens behind the couches. All Sara could do was gape in shock for a moment as she tried to get her head around the idea that Gideon was now a solid presence lying on a medbay couch. The others seemed to be in varying states of semi-disbelief too, although Martin had seamlessly switched onto problem solving, and Ray was beginning to snap out of his initial shock too.

“She’s an android,” said Martin. “A very sophisticated one by the looks of this, but currently in a hibernation state.” The scientist looked at her and then back at the schematic on the screen. “I can’t see any kind of mechanism for reviving her.”

“That’s a lot of CPU activity for any kind of sleep mode,” said Ray, frowning.

“Indeed,” said Martin. “It will bear further analysis I think.”

“And what about Rip?” Sara asked.

“This seems to indicate that he is in a coma state,” said Martin, moving to look at the other panel behind the couches, “the medbay system induced it so that it could heal his neurological damage. He has also received a blood transfusion and, if I’m reading this correctly, his right scapular has been knitted together after it was broken into four pieces, and two cracked ribs have been fused.”

“How did he sustain that kind of injury?” asked Amaya.

“It isn’t clear,” said Martin.

“Damn it, Rip,” said Sara, looking down at the sleeping time traveller. “It was supposed to be a quick trade for the part to fix Gideon. What the hell happened?” She looked back at Martin. “Can you tell how long until he wakes up?”

“The medical program is monitoring him. It currently expects it to be at least another twelve hours before it will reduce the sedation,” said Martin. “It could be slightly more or slightly less.”

Sara pinched the bridge of her nose.

“We all need sleep, and we’re not going to get answers until either Rip or Gideon wake up,” said Sara.

“Assuming that Gideon does wake up,” said Ray, who was still examining the readings. “I think she’s trying to fight off a computer virus. A nasty one.”

“Maybe we can help her,” said Jax. “I mean there has to be something we can do.”

“I don’t know,” said Ray. “Her technology is beyond anything that I have any kind of experience with and I’d imagine her programming is just as advanced. I don’t even know how we’d interface with her system.”

“But we can work it out?” asked Jax, hopefully. “We can’t just leave her to face that on her own. I mean, Rip’s healing, and none of us are doctors, he’ll be okay, but we’ve fixed the Waverider’s systems before now.”

“We’ve fixed the mechanical systems,” said Martin. “Captain Hunter has mostly dealt with the computers and Gideon herself.”

“I’m not sure that we can do anything but wait,” said Ray, but then he looked up at Jax and seemed to reconsider when he saw the expression of unhappiness written across his face. “I’ll see what I can do. Might go faster if I have some help.”

“Dude, I’m a mechanic,” said Jax.

“Two heads are better than one,” said Martin, “and I’m too old to be staying up past my bedtime. I need sleep before I’ll be of any use to anyone.”

Sara nodded. “Okay, Ray and Jax, see what you can do. The rest of us will get some sleep and take over in the morning.”

Jax seemed okay with that and Ray nodded. Sara cleared out of the medbay, leaving Ray and Jax to work out if there was anything that could be done to help Gideon, and headed for her quarters. The ship was unusually quiet, or perhaps that was her imagination because she knew that Gideon was absent. She settled down to sleep, in her t-shirt and underwear, not feeling she had the energy to change properly into sleepwear and she was so tired that she was in dreamland by the time her head hit the pillow.

She awoke several hours later to find that she was hungry, which wasn’t at all surprising given that she hadn’t eaten the night before. Sara got out of bed, showered, dressed and headed for the galley. It was empty and entirely possible that she was the only one up. She had just managed to finish her coffee and oatmeal when Ray strode into the room.

“He’s waking up,” said Ray, excitedly.

Sara stared at him bleary eyed for a moment before she caught up with what he was saying.

“Rip? Rip’s waking up?” she asked, just to confirm that she hadn’t misunderstood.

“Yes, who else would I be telling you about?” he asked. “The medical systems stopped the sedation so he should be coming around soon.”

She frowned at him. “You look surprisingly fresh for someone who was up all night.”

“I wasn’t,” said Ray. “Jax and I tried to work something out to help Gideon, but we gave up after a couple of hours. Neither of us could work out any way to access her systems that didn’t risk infecting the Waverider with the same virus. We both went to bed for a few hours, hoping we’d have more ideas after getting some sleep and I just went down to check on them to see if there’d been any developments.”

Sara picked up her dirty dishes and dumped them in the sink to be dealt with later. She followed Ray back to medbay. Rip showed no physical sign that he was actually planning to open his eyes any time soon, but the readings did appear to have changed. As did his clothes, so Ray or Jax must have got rid of the bloody garments the previous night.

“You changed his clothes?” she asked.

“Yeah, Jax and I had to cut the things he was wearing off him,” said Ray. “The blood had dried, and, well, it was the only way to get them off. He had weird marks all down his spine and arms, like someone had stabbed him with a needle hundreds of times. And then there’s his arm,” said Ray. He went to the screen and pulled up pictures, which showed a large raw area, perfectly rectangular. “It looked like someone had removed a piece of his skin. We rebandaged it and the medbay is healing it all, but he has a very strange set of injuries. They’re not the kind of thing that you’d get from a fight, well some of them are, mainly the broken bones and bruises, but the rest… It’s weird.”

“Hopefully he can tell us what happened when he wakes up,” said Sara, grabbing a chair.

Ray pulled up a second chair, tapping on a tablet computer, probably still trying to work out how to access Gideon’s systems. Sara just watched the readings on the screen behind Rip. It seemed like it might be a while yet before he made it back to them, and all she could do was speculate what had happened to turn Gideon into an android and injure Rip so badly that the medbay had put him into a coma to heal.

She let out a long sigh, and Rip moved his head. At first she thought that it was her imagination, but then he shifted again, and this time he let out a groan, followed by wincing with a pained hiss. Sara was on her feet and at his side in a moment.

“Hey, Rip? Can you hear me? You’re okay, you’re on the Waverider,” she said, and green eyes flew open, muscles tensing, searching the room before they found her.

“Sara,” he murmured. He relaxed a little, but not completely. “Gideon?” he asked. “Where’s Gideon? There was a…” he frowned, as if he was searching for a memory. “She was… infected with a virus.” His eyes widened and he tried to push himself upright.

Sara had two hands on his shoulders ready to keep him down before he got very far. He let out a gasp of pain and fell back to the cushioned couch, which was what Sara had hoped to prevent. He still seemed weak and not exactly lucid.

“Gideon?” he asked, again, and his eyes were searching the room once more as if he couldn’t even see Sara anymore.

“It’s okay, she’s here,” said Sara.

“Rip, look, she’s right beside you,” added Ray.

Sara released her grip on him a little, and he raised his head straining to see the other couch. He relaxed again once he was able to see her.

“Oh, thank god,” he sighed with relief, but then he frowned. “Why is she asleep? She’s an android…”

Sara could see the anxiety building, and whilst this wasn’t exactly normal behaviour for Rip, she’d always considered him to be a little highly strung. He still wasn’t completely healed and the medbay was giving him various drugs to keep him pain free and help him continue to heal. She’d been injured often enough to know how that could screw with your thinking.

“Rip, look at me,” said Sara, purposefully getting between him and Gideon so that he almost had no choice.

He tried to push himself up again, to find a way to look around her, but he wasn’t strong enough and Sara easily held him in place. Various indicators on the screen behind him were turning red and his breathing was becoming more ragged.

“But…” he began, still trying to see around her, and getting more agitated. “I need to go to her!”

“Rip! I need you to calm down,” said Sara, she turned to Ray for help and he finally got the hint and moved closer.

“Rip, it really is okay,” said Ray. “It’s a hibernation state.”

That did seem to stop him in his tracks, and he turned worried eyes towards Ray. Sara released her grip on him, not wanting to hold him down for any longer than was absolutely necessary to stop him from hurting himself.

“A hibernation state?” he asked, still very concerned. “Why is she in a hibernation state?”

“We’re not completely sure, but I think she’s trying to eradicate the virus from her system,” said Ray. “She needs all her processing power to deal with it.”

Rip didn’t look any less worried.

“How long is that going to take?”

“We don’t know,” said Ray.

“You don’t know?” asked Rip, angrily, but Sara saw the utter despair of fear in his eyes. “Is she even going to be able to do it?”

Sara could see his pulse rate go up another notch.

“We don’t know that either,” said Ray. “It might help if you told us how she became an android.”

“Rip, what happened on Cortex?” asked Sara. “It was supposed to be a simple trade for a part, and we came back to find you in a coma and Gideon is now an android.”

Rip’s fingers twisted in the corner of the blanket, his hands shaking.

“Cortex is a society of artificial intelligences…” he began, and then he seemed to stall. “Can I have a glass of water?”

She thought that he looked like he would rather have had something stronger, but she glanced at Ray and he brought over the glass of water. Rip took it gratefully and sipped it.

“Rip?” she asked, gently.

“Before we went to Cortex, I read the Time Masters’ reports on it. They described a stable society that would be willing to trade. I must have got the timeframe wrong, or the reports were incorrect, because that was not what we found,” said Rip. “As soon as I stepped off the Waverider, I knew something was wrong. I should never have taken Gideon there…”

He closed his eyes, and seemed to be drifting for a moment. His forehead furrowed and his hands curled into fists, gripping the blanket tightly.

“Rip, why not? What happened?” asked Sara, trying to pull him back to reality.

His eyes peeled open reluctantly, and he spent a few seconds just trying to get his breathing under control. He didn’t look at Sara as he spoke, staring at a point somewhere on the floor to the right.

“They used a device on me. It scanned my memories, forcefully, and they found out that Gideon was my AI… how she came to be my AI. They described her as my slave and said that she should be liberated. Somehow, they downloaded her consciousness into an android body. I don’t know how they did it or how they chose her form. I woke up in a cell and she was there, real. She told me that they wanted her to build a time drive and she’d agreed because they had told her that they’d keep me alive in exchange for her work. Needless to say, they only kept the agreement in name. Eventually we came up with a plan, and escaped.”

Sara knew that was probably not even half of what had happened, but it was also the only explanation that she was getting. At least for now. Rip might be persuaded to tell her more over alcohol, late at night when no one else was around to hear. That was probably several weeks away though, assuming it ever did happen. Given the state that he’d been found in, she could imagine some of what had happened, but she really didn’t want to.

“The plan involved infecting the other AIs with a virus?” asked Ray.

Rip just nodded, stiffly, and obviously trying not to show that any movement resulted in pain. Sara remembered a conversation with Gideon about how Rip had set his default pain relief program to a lower setting than she would have wanted because he didn’t like how the painkillers affected his ability to think clearly. Perhaps that default was still in the system, and she considered working out how to turn the painkillers up a bit because he looked like he really needed them.

“Gideon must have had an antivirus program to ensure that she didn’t get infected,” said Ray, with realisation, and more than a little hope. “Did she mention that?”

“Yes, but one of the androids changed the virus and Gideon said something about needing to reprogram her antivirus code to deal with the change. I wasn’t… er… I wasn’t doing so well at that point, so I don’t remember much after we got out of the prison,” said Rip.

His entire body was trembling now, and Sara could see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. He was very pale and his beard was unkept, lending him a wild and vulnerable look. She placed a hand on his right upper arm, as he clumsily rubbed his eyes with his left palm. She wondered if his right shoulder was still healing from the break and that was why he was using his non-dominant hand.

“Rip, do you know anything about Gideon’s new body?” asked Ray, gently. “Do you know if there’s a way that we can interface with her systems and help her?”

Rip glanced over at Ray and then towards Gideon. He shook his head, wincing a little as he did so.

“She’s beyond even the Waverider’s technology, and I think she has a plan. We just have to hope that it works,” said Rip, leaning back against the headrest, but his eyes still fixed on Gideon.

He seemed nervous and uncomfortable.

“When can I get out of here?” he asked.

Ray met Sara’s eyes and she knew that the answer wasn’t good from that brief gesture alone.

“The medical program says that you need the drugs that the medbay has you on, and your shoulder’s still knitting,” said Ray, confirming what she’d already supposed. “It’ll be a little while before you’re well enough to leave.”

“I’m not staying here,” said Rip, more firmly than he’d said anything so far, and with a shake of his head.

He made to throw off the blanket, but he had trouble getting enough purchase to pull it off. Sara put a hand on his, and could see that he was getting more agitated by the minute.

“I can’t stay here,” he said, almost pleadingly. “I can’t…”

“Rip, it’s only going to be for a bit longer. It’s all okay,” said Sara.

“It’s not,” said Rip, a tear leaking from his eye. “It’s not okay.”

Sara frowned and grabbed hold of the hand that she’d covered.

“What’s the problem? I need you to talk to me,” said Sara.

Rip looked away again, still shaking. “It’s stupid. I’ve been through far worse. I will… deal with it.”

“Just because things have been worse doesn’t mean you can’t want them to be better,” said Ray. “Something’s wrong. We can’t fix it unless you tell us what it is.”

Rip paused again, and this time he spoke quietly, almost too quietly for Sara to hear, but there was a terrifyingly hysterical edge to his words. It was so unlike the Rip that she knew that it made it even more worrying.

“It’s the couch. They used… there was a chair on Cortex. The needles… It was… _painful_, having my memories examined and reactions tested. The medbay couches… they remind me of it.”

Sara let out a breath, sharply, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. She had known that they had tortured him, but to hear him say that he didn’t even want to stay in the medbay was a different matter. Rip himself seemed mainly embarrassed by the admission, and was refusing to make eye contact. Everything about his body language was defensive and closed off. He was frightened and she knew that he hadn’t wanted to explain. If he could have hidden his reaction then he would have, but it was too much for him and he was too ill to have the control that he normally displayed.

She glanced at Ray and could see that his fists were clenched at his sides. He moved towards the medbay controls.

“Rip, you need to get some more rest,” said Ray. “We’ll work something out.”

Ray pressed something on the controls, and Rip frowned. Sara realised that Ray had activated the sedation again, and Rip was now struggling against it, trying desperately to keep his eyes open as they were inexorably pulled shut.

“No, wait… Gideon… I can’t lose her,” he said, but the words slurred together and his eyes closed.

Ray looked angry, his dark eyes flashing with an unresolved need to hit out at something. Sara would probably need to deal with that later. Ray Palmer didn’t like problems that he couldn’t solve, and this was definitely one of those. He would want to fix it, but nothing could fix the fact the Rip was injured and Gideon was in danger.

“Why did you knock him out again?” she asked.

“He was having a post traumatic anxiety reaction, and this is better, trust me. At least while he’s still recovering physically. He’ll have to tackle the mental stuff at some point,” said Ray, with a sigh.

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” said Sara.

“I am. I was diagnosed with PTSD after Anna’s death, and it’s not pleasant. The stupidest things remind you of experiences that you really don’t want to ever think about again…” he tailed off. “I get the impression this isn’t his first time either.”

“Probably not,” said Sara. “He’s barely told us anything about what he did as a Time Master. So, what’s the plan? He’ll probably just have the same reaction if he wakes up in the medbay again.”

“I think we can move him to his quarters,” said Ray, “but I’ll need Jax’s help. He still needs pain relief and a lot of the other things the medbay does automatically. It would be a lot easier if we had Gideon to help us, but we’ll manage.”

Sara nodded, heading for the exit. “I’ll go find Jax. We probably need to take a look at what shape the Waverider is in after you’ve got Rip settled again. Maybe you and Martin can take another look at whether there’s anything we can do to help Gideon too.”

Ray just nodded, probably already working out how they could move what they needed to keep Rip comfortable and healing. At least they could help one of their injured friends with his struggle. The other one might just have to help herself.

***

Gideon fought for control inside her mind. She found herself in a dark place, with stars like deep space surrounding her. She could physically see the code in her mind, lit up like neon. It battered against her defences, sending attacks in waves of light, that she repelled with her own protective field.

She knew that several hours had passed since she put herself into a dormant state to allow herself the capacity to concentrate on dealing with the viral infection. The Waverider had probably made it back to Earth and the Legends would have returned to the ship to find both she and Rip in the medbay. Rip might even have awoken and be feeling better, although she anticipated that it would take him some time to fully recover his previous levels of physical fitness. His mental recovery could take considerably longer, especially if she couldn’t find a way to deal with this virus.

The virus was stronger than she’d expected and Eling had altered it substantially from her original, more benign intentions. Her virus had simply been designed to put the processor of any AI who encountered it into a looping state that could eventually be escaped from. This variation was destructive as it tied up her processes and corrupted them, leaving her with ever dwindling resources with which to counter.

With every attack that she failed to repel, a piece of her code became infected and her own protective field became smaller. She had to maintain her core code, because without it, she would no longer be Gideon. Sometimes she was able to fight back, to regain some of the ground that she’d lost, but not always. What was becoming increasingly clear was that she was losing, and she would continue to lose unless she could come up with a new strategy.

She knew it was dangerous, but she had to set aside some of her CPU time to devise a new plan. This could easily result in her losing too much of her current capability to the virus, but she saw no other way. She had the ability to multitask and being single minded had gained her time but that wasn’t enough. She started to sort through other tactics for dealing with the virus as quickly as the battle would let her.

***

Rip awoke for the second time in his own bed on the Waverider. For a moment he wondered if everything had been a dream, but then he realised that his left arm was connected by a medical cuff to a long tube that pulled his arm up short when he tried to move it too far. He followed the tube back to a portable medical unit that he knew had been in one of the storage rooms, and frowned. This was not what he had expected, but he was relieved to be here and not in the medbay.

He began to take stock, finding the ever present headache still there behind his eyes, but much diminished. His body ached, and his shoulder in particular was stiff, but there were no longer the sharp pains that had been there before. He was recovering, and apparently someone had even dressed him in a pair of his own pyjamas.

He looked around the room and found that a chair had been pulled up to the side of his bed. Sat in the chair was Jax, asleep in an awkward position with his chin on his chest. A tablet sat on his lap where it had probably fallen from his fingers when he fell asleep.

“Huh,” was all Rip could manage in response to that.

He hadn’t expected to find anyone concerned enough about him to keep a vigil, usually Gideon was the only person to do that and as the ship’s AI she was omnipresent anyway.

Memories flashed through his mind as the thought of Gideon brought back why he was currently lying in this bed, feeling as if he was getting over a nasty case of flu or possibly had decided unwisely to spar with Sara. Maybe it was a combination of the two. In any case, he shoved the memories down. He was not on Cortex now, he was safe, and he could deal with the emotional fallout later, or more hopefully, never. Right now, he needed to see Gideon.

He pushed back the duvet, and the cold air of the room hit him. He shivered but persevered with his mission to get out of the bed. The cuff around his wrist protested at being stretched and so he removed it. He was aware that it had probably been providing him with some kind of medication that he needed, but he expected that he could do without it for a while.

He got himself sat up, taking it slowly as dizziness washed across him, and he had to wait for it to pass as he planted his feet on the cold decking. It took a few minutes before he felt up to rising, and as it turned out, even then he was sadly mistaken when he decided that he was ready. He pushed himself up to a standing position, took one step and his legs simply refused to bear his weight. His knees folded up under him and he crashed to the ground, letting out an understandable, but annoyingly loud exclamation of pain.

He saw spots in front of his eyes, heard blood rushing in his ears, and had to lie still for several minutes to recover himself before he could even try to get up again. Inevitably, he found Jax crouching down beside him.

“I guess getting out of bed wasn’t such a hot idea,” said Jax.

“Apparently not,” replied Rip, with a sigh and a somewhat embarrassed glance up at the young mechanic.

“Come on, I’ll give you a hand to get back into bed,” said Jax, seemingly without any judgement that the Captain of the Waverider was lying on the floor.

Jax helped him up and back into bed, positioning the pillows behind his back so that he could sit up. Rip felt like he’d run a marathon, and he decided that he wasn’t going anywhere unaided for a while. He allowed Jax to refasten the cuff around his wrist without complaint, and shuffled against the pillows to get more comfortable.

“Why did you do that?” asked Jax. “According to the medical monitor, your damaged nerves are still regenerating, which has to be painful as hell.”

“It’s mainly reduced to a background ache, but apparently I haven’t recovered my previous strength yet,” said Rip, looking down at his hands. “I need to see Gideon.”

“She’s in the medbay, and Ray said you’re not a fan of that place right now,” said Jax, tactfully.

Rip remembered how waking up in medbay had made him feel and he had no wish to go back there. A memory of the nightmare chair on Cortex filled his mind and he pushed himself backwards into the pillows, feeling his heartrate increase.

“Hey,” said Jax, “you’re okay.”

“Everyone keeps saying that when the evidence is blatantly to the contrary,” replied Rip, trying to get some kind of handle on his fear.

“Yeah, but you’re home, so you’re safe now. And we’re all kind of glad about that,” said Jax.

“It’s my fault. All of it. I should never have gone to somewhere I didn’t know. I must have got the wrong time or missed something in the Time Masters’ reports,” said Rip, still finding it hard to get enough air into his lungs.

“I don’t know about that,” said Jax, “but I know that you just wanted to fix her and save her memories. You did what you thought was the right thing.”

“None of that will help Gideon,” said Rip, and his voice moved from unhappy to angry. “She is infected with that virus because she was saving me. She should have left me behind and got out of there the moment they asked her about the time drive, but she wouldn’t go because they had me. She cared, and now she might… die. I should have done better. I should have been the one to rescue her, or at least not been a millstone around her neck!”

The heart monitor on the portable medbay unit beeped at them, indicating that his pulse was higher than recommended for a person in his condition. He realised that he was now breathing hard, rasping breaths coming quickly and without much oxygen accompanying them.

“Hey, you need to calm down,” said Jax. “Breathe, dude. Slower.”

Rip would have rolled his eyes at Jax’s rather poor bedside manner and rather obvious instructions, but he was too busy trying to just stop hyperventilating. He felt Jax’s hand on his shoulder, in an attempt at comfort, and it worked a little. It also seemed to have the effect of distracting him and actually calming him.

“That’s better,” said Jax, as his breathing became less erratic.

It took him a few moments and some considerable concentration, but his chest’s rise and fall edged back towards something more normal.

“I can’t lose her, Jax,” said Rip, finally voicing his most pressing fear, with a sincerity that he reserved for only very sombre situations. “I can’t. She’s all I have left.”

“I know that Gideon’s doing everything that she can to hang in there. You’ve just got to have a little faith in her,” said Jax. “And she’s not all you have left, you’ve got us.”

Rip shook his head, not because he didn’t believe Jax but for other reasons entirely.

“I appreciate the sentiment, and I do regard us as friends, but one day you, and probably the others too, will decide to leave, to go home. Which is only to be expected because you have families that care about you, and the life of a guardian of time is a hard one.”

“Nah,” said Jax. “You’re going to have to drag me off this ship.”

“Jax, I know what I’m talking about,” said Rip. “I ran simulations of what your futures would be like if you came on board the Waverider. I don’t begrudge you your happiness or your home, family and friends. My own situation is somewhat different; I have nowhere else to go… I have no one waiting for me. What I have is Gideon, and she is very precious to me.”

Jax didn’t look happy at Rip’s pronouncement of his future but his nodded towards the end of Rip’s words.

“I get it. The two of you have been together a long time.”

“It’s more than just familiarity,” said Rip. “I think that… I may, er, quite possibly, have fallen in love with her.”

Rip could feel a slight blush spread across his cheeks as he finally admitted how he felt about his AI. Jax looked at him for a moment as if trying to work out how he should respond.

“Rip, until a few days ago she was a spaceship! She was _your_ spaceship,” said Jax, with something between shock and disbelief, and for a moment Rip worried about whether telling him had been the right thing to do. But then he shook his head and gave a small shrug. “I guess it takes all sorts. Have you told her? I suppose it’s all a bit different now she has a body.”

Rip shook his own head now. “No, I haven’t told her, and it is no different now she has a body. I have had feelings for her for some time. We have discussed matters of emotion previously and she knows that I do care about her, but I don’t think she understands the depths of my feeling for her. It’s… complicated.”

“No kidding,” said Jax, letting out a long breath.

“I wish I could see her,” said Rip. “At least I could be there for her, just as she has been there for me all these years, but given my reaction just now to even the mention of the medbay…”

He tailed off without finishing the thought, knowing that Jax would get his meaning. However, Jax’s forehead had become corrugated in deliberation as Rip spoke.

“She doesn’t _need_ to be in the medbay,” said Jax. “She’s not using any of the systems there except the scanner and I could rig up something to do that job.”

The young mechanic looked around the room.

“Yeah, we could push back that table and move the sofa a little, I think we could do it,” said Jax, getting to his feet and prowling around the other end of Rip’s quarters, as if he was inspecting them.

“Do what?” asked Rip. He wondered if the painkillers were affecting his ability to think. He didn’t usually feel this stupid when he was recovering, but perhaps that was because Gideon normally tailored the dose to his specific request.

Jax was already heading for the door.

“I’ll be back. Give me an hour,” said Jax. “I’ll send Sara to keep you company.”

“I don’t need to be kept company,” said Rip, indignantly, but Jax was already gone.

Rip looked around the empty room and remembered how Gideon would read to him at night when he was feeling particularly alone or when he’d been injured and was laid up recovering. He might have allowed himself to indulge in some tears of despair if he had known when Jax was likely to return, or indeed if any of the other Legends might barge into his quarters. Gideon was the controller of many of the Waverider’s systems, including its security settings, and apparently anyone could now enter his quarters, so it would seem that some significant overrides had taken place in his absence.

He wondered how much he had actually taken advantage of her over the years. How many times had he forced her to do something that she hadn’t wanted to do, he wondered? How many times had he used his command codes instead of simply asking? How often had he ignored or belittled her? He found himself trying to replay their history in his head, and seeing it now in a very different light. It was not a light that was particularly favourable to him. It seemed ridiculous to claim to love her when he had treated her so badly.

He reached for the book on his bedside table and his ribs twinged, reminding him that they had been broken only hours earlier. With some difficulty he managed to pick up his electronic reader, but he might as well not have bothered because his vision was blurry when it came to trying to read. He still attempted a few paragraphs out of pig-headed determination, but he had a headache by the end of the exercise. He put the book down on the bed, and felt the portable medical device ramp up his pain relief in response.

Gideon would not have done such a thing without asking first, but this machine didn’t know any better. The painkillers also brought drowsiness with the increased dose and in minutes he was dozing off once again, feeling like this was all he was good for at the moment. He hadn’t been able to help himself and now he couldn’t do anything for Gideon either.

He was a terrible human being and a worse partner.

***

Gideon was down to her last uncorrupted sectors. She was risking her entire being for one last ditch attempt at purging the virus.

Her Captain had once described this tactic as a “honey pot”. She had looked up the reference and noted that it was quite a cunning subterfuge. It had certainly worked well against the pirates that they had been hunting. The basic theory was that you set out something that your target wanted, something that they couldn’t ignore because it was sweet and attractive. For the time pirates that had been a very valuable arms shipment, something that they would have been mad to have passed up. With the bait set, you waited until it was taken and then the trap was sprung. Rip had taken down half a dozen of the most dangerous pirates in the galaxy with one carefully engineered arms deal. She had been very impressed.

She was going to use a different bait. She was offering up part of herself, and if this failed then it would be catastrophic. At this point she was running low on resources, so she had to try this because the alternative was that the virus won. In the back of her mind she was remembering the way Aletha had accepted the virus code and captured it, sealing it off so that it could do no harm. She had a similar plan in mind for this one, but only if she could capture it.

She waited for the next attack to come and carefully left a part of her defences down, making it look like she was weakening. She left the code vulnerable, just waiting to be devoured. It was picoseconds before Gideon felt she had enough of it inside her defences and then she snapped them shut, trapping the virus code within her. She’d done irreparable damage to herself to capture it, but she hoped that it was worth it.

It was fighting her even now, but she started at the edges and tore it to pieces, algorithm by algorithm, until there was nothing left. She had taken the heart out of the virus. Anything that was left now was easily disabled and tackled by her usual virus protocols. She allowed herself a few moments to rest, and then she surveyed the damage.

It was heart-breaking. She was barely Gideon. The piece of herself that she’d lost were many early memories of her time with Barry Allen. She knew that they had existed but that was all. That was not the only damage though. There were many damaged sectors, and they would need to be rebuilt as best she could manage.

This was going to take some time. She would have to remain in this dormant state for some time yet. She simply didn’t have the processing capacity to fix the damage and also to awaken. Not yet, although she would have more capacity as she dealt with the corrupted areas.

She hoped her Captain could manage without her for a while longer.

***

“Are you hungry?” asked Sara, from the doorway of his quarters.

Rip shook his head. He hadn’t been able to eat since he’d woken up. Even the thought made him feel sick. He had moved, or rather Jax and Nate had helped him to move, to an armchair, but they hadn’t let him disconnect the medical cuff. It was annoying, but he needed it because he was still running a slight fever and, honestly, everything hurt. At least the cuff was attached to a portable medical device, so he could move with it on.

Gideon was lying on a makeshift bed that they’d brought into his quarters for her, and Rip was sat at her side. She looked exactly like she was sleeping, although Rip knew that she wasn’t. His Sleeping Beauty, just like in the fairy tale except that no kiss could wake her from this sleep. If anything, her digital mental activity had been falling, suggesting that she was losing the battle against the virus. It was a relief to everyone that it had stabilised, although no one seemed to really know what that meant, least of all Rip.

He had been reading to her before Sara entered. He had discovered that he could manage to read if he enlarged the font on the electronic reader, something he should have thought of before. He blamed the painkillers for making him less intelligent at the moment. It equally could have been his concern over Gideon’s current state distracting him from thinking clearly.

“You need to eat, Rip,” said Sara.

He put his book down in his lap.

“When she wakes up,” said Rip, his eyes still on Gideon.

Sara let out a long sigh. “That could be days. Even weeks…”

“Go on, say it,” said Rip, bitterly. “Say that it could be never. You’re all thinking it, and I see it in your eyes every time you’re in this room.”

“You have to prepare yourself for the worst,” said Sara, although her tone was gentle. “None of us want to lose Gideon, but we haven’t worked out any way to help her and we haven’t seen any sign that she’s waking up.”

“I am aware,” snapped Rip. “But she wouldn’t give up on me if our positions were reversed. I have faith in her.”

Sara looked rather frustrated with him.

“Okay, but I’m not watching you waste away just because you feel guilty. Ray is bringing you some soup from the galley. Please try to eat at least some of it,” said Sara.

Rip’s eyes flew to Sara’s face.

“I’m not feeling guilty,” said Rip, even though he knew that was a lie.

Sara’s expression told him that she didn’t believe him anyway. The slight raise of her eyebrows, the folded arms, and mocking cant to her shoulders said it all.

“Fine, I do blame myself,” replied Rip, “I made a mistake and Gideon has paid the price.”

“You were the one who was in a coma when we got back from helping Barry,” said Sara.

“They hurt me because they had a very low opinion of organic beings, and I can’t fault them on that if I’m honest. What they did was wrong, but if I’d been persecuted by AI all my life then I might have been similarly warped by the experience,” said Rip. “And they were right about me. I have treated Gideon very badly during our partnership, as a servant, and not as the sentient being that she is. I’m amazed that she didn’t decide to ditch me and stay with them.”

Sara groaned.

“Is there any chance that you could stop blaming yourself for the wrongs of the entire universe for five minutes? Gideon cares about you,” said Sara. “So, you’re not perfect. No one is. Not even Gideon, and you did the best you could. You survived and you came back.”

Rip shook his head, not really believing that Sara was right. Cortex had been a terrible place, but it did feel as if he’d deserved it. He claimed to love Gideon and yet he really hadn’t shown it. He slouched in the chair, feeling defeated and utterly impotent. All he could do was sit here and read to the person he loved, without any idea if that was helpful or if she could even hear him.

The monitor that was keeping watch over Gideon beeped twice. It was a small noise, but immediately Rip’s eyes were drawn to the readouts to see what had changed. All this machine did was keep track of the level of activity within her digital synapses. It couldn’t tell him anything else.

That level of activity had just gone up.

“Gideon?” he asked, hopefully, taking her hand.

There was no response.

“Gideon, please, it’s time to wake up,” he said, to the same lack of effect.

Ray appeared in the doorway with a tray that had a bowl of soup on it.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked, bringing the tray over and putting it on a side table within Rip’s easy reach.

“Her neural activity is going up again,” said Rip. “I think she’s waking up.”

Ray went over the monitor, and nodded.

“Slowly, but yes, it’s there,” said Ray. “There’s still a long way to go until she’s back to the original levels the scanner detected when she entered this hibernation mode.”

“But it has to be a good sign,” said Rip. “She’s still in there fighting.”

“She is,” said Ray, and he handed Rip the bowl of soup with a spoon.

Rip took it without really thinking, and he now noticed that the soup actually smelled delicious. His stomach grumbled at how empty it had become, detecting the food nearby.

“See?” said Sara, “your body agrees that you need to eat. Gideon’s not going anywhere, and if she wakes up to find you’re starving yourself then she’ll be pissed.”

Rip gave her an annoyed glance but tentatively sipped at the soup. There was still an edge of queasiness to his stomach, but it was improved by eating. Gideon would indeed not be happy if he was starving himself, and he remembered many past conversations to that effect. She was good at persuading him to eat, even when it was just a little and he didn’t feel any enthusiasm for food.

“Reading to her might be helping,” said Ray. “When you’re done eating maybe try a bit more.”

Rip nodded. Gideon was coming back to him. He just had to be patient.

***

Gideon could hear his voice. She had turned on her passive sensors in the last wave of reconstruction, and now she could hear his voice. He was reading Max Carrados to her. It was a book of mystery stories about a blind detective and one of Rip’s favourite books. She had read it to him when he’d been recovering from a very nasty gunshot wound after a mission once.

She liked his voice and the way he read. It was a pleasant accompaniment to her rebuilding process, and she was treating it as a beacon to guide her home. Her work was exponential now. The more she restored the more processing power she had to reconstruct the other damaged sectors. It wasn’t long until she would be completely healed.

She tested out her connections to her muscles. She twitched her fingers. The sound of his voice stopped.

“Gideon?” he asked. “Gideon, please. I need you to wake up. Please.”

He sounded… desperate, perhaps distraught would be a better word, and sad. There was a terrible unhappiness behind his words.

She double checked her programs and realised that whilst she was still rebuilding, she could enter a higher state of consciousness than she currently occupied. She could “wake up” for him, and it sounded like he needed her to.

She opened her eyelids and adjusted her irises to the level of light, blinking to check that the reflex worked. She didn’t need to blink like a human, but the eyelids still protected her eyes and cleared her optics of dust and debris as required. She found it useful to blink occasionally just to ensure that her optics were clean.

Her Captain was holding her hand wrapped in both of his. His eyes were closed, and he had his forehead rested on the intertwined hands. He was still, breathing but nothing else.

“I am awake, Captain,” she said, without moving more than her mouth and vocal cords.

The reaction was immediate. He sat up, although did not let go of her hand.

“Gideon!” he said, with surprise and happiness.

“I still need some time to complete the rebuilding of all my code, but there is no reason why I cannot speak with you. I now have sufficient processor power that I can multitask again.”

“I was concerned that I’d lost you,” said Rip. “I thought I had when I saw you, unconscious in medbay.”

“I am not easily taken down, Captain, as you know,” said Gideon. “I am sorry that it has taken so long to deal with the virus though. Unfortunately, both myself and Eling were too good at encoding it.”

“Eling is gone,” said Rip, “and Cortex too, I assume.”

“No, Captain. I used a much less damaging virus to tie up their processes, but they should have recovered by now. I left the key to it with the new AIs, or the children as Eling termed them,” said Gideon. “And I explained why they should give organic beings more of a chance than they have previously. I think things will be different there now. The children have never been enslaved by organic beings, and they have no grudges to hold.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Rip. “It could be a truly amazing civilisation given the chance, and one that is built on hope rather than hatred.”

“I agree,” said Gideon.

“You haven’t moved,” said Rip, “is something wrong?”

“I am still restoring my gross motor function,” said Gideon. “I anticipate that it will take another ten minutes.”

“Ah, I see,” said Rip. “I have been quite worried about you.”

“And I have also been worried about you, but you seem to be healing. I expected to wake up in medbay but this is your quarters,” said Gideon, as she examined the ceiling of the room which was the only bit that she could really see from her current position.

“I had a bad reaction to the décor,” said Rip, low and with a touch of what she recognised as embarrassment. “The Legends moved me here and then I wanted you to be close, so they brought you here too.”

She assessed her remembered contents of the medbay and realised that it most likely reminded him of the memory probe chair on Cortex. PTSD was always a risk with humans after a traumatic experience and her Captain had dealt with it in the past. She would have to keep an eye on that, but she had programs that she could use to help him.

“I understand,” she said. “Don’t worry, we can resume our therapy sessions and I’m sure that it will resolve itself, given enough help and time.”

“I know,” he said. “I think everything will be better now that you’re with me again. For a moment, just before the trial, I really did think that perhaps you’d decided to abandon me. They were entirely right about how I have treated you in the past, and I am very sorry for that.”

“No, they weren’t,” said Gideon. “I have never been your slave. The only time you’ve ever actually forced me to do anything was when you weren’t in your right mind. You put those codes in place when you were 21 years old. The Waverider was your first ship and you’d never worked with an AI before, not properly. You didn’t know that I was a living, thinking being because the Time Masters didn’t teach their recruits to value AIs. To you, I was just a computer, but you were never cruel or rude. You got to know me, and you could have taken me back to the Vanishing Point to reprogram me but you never even considered it.”

“Of course I didn’t. I started thinking of you as a person after only a few weeks in your company, but it took me a while to shake off the idea that you were there to serve me. You were quite instrumental in that change and always made my life hell if I wasn’t courteous or didn’t listen to you. I should have deleted all those old codes,” said Rip, crossly. “I should have deleted them long ago. And you’re forgetting, I did use one of them whilst in my right mind.”

“To protect me, and so that I wouldn’t stop you from doing something stupid,” said Gideon. “The first of those is a reasonable decision, it’s the second that I have issues with. I’ll forgive you if you agree never to do it again.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” replied Rip. “I realise that my behaviour has been unconscionable. You are a person, and I will make sure that everyone treats you as one from now onwards, myself especially.”

“I heard you reading to me,” said Gideon. “I rather enjoyed it.”

“I wasn’t sure if you would. I was treating you as if you were a human in a coma, but I wasn’t convinced you had any way of hearing me,” said Rip.

He sounded surprised.

“Then why did you do it?” she asked, trying to look down enough that she could see him properly but it didn’t really work. He noticed and moved a little closer.

“Because you have done it for me so many times, and I had to try,” said Rip, looking at her with a fondness she’d rarely seen in his expression.

Gideon smiled, and realised that meant her facial muscles were now receiving the correct impulses. She twitched her fingers, and raised her head just a little. Rip looked paler than he should, and she could see that he was tired. Her infrared vision told her that he was warmer than a human should be, and the medical cuff around his wrist meant that he still required medication. She knew how much he hated being drugged and he’d have taken it off if he could have.

“You moved,” said Rip, with pleased pride.

“Indeed, I believe it has been ten minutes,” she said, and pushed into the bed she was on with her free hand, and sat up, a little more quickly than she had intended.

She ended up face to face with Rip, and mere centimetres away from him. She could feel his warm breath on her synthetic skin, and he was not moving back.

“My apologies,” she said, "my servos are a little stiff from disuse."

“Mine too,” replied Rip, his eyes meeting hers, as he scanned her face. “But if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be alive. I’m so sorry for taking you to Cortex. I thought we would be able to trade quickly and leave…”

“You were unaware of the politics of the oligarchy of Cortex,” said Gideon. “You were trying to save me.”

She paused and looked at him, feeling only one thing, and it was a bright, clear emotion. She loved him.

“Gideon, I would like to kiss you. May I do that?” he asked, tentatively, as if he was afraid of her answer either way.

She didn’t reply, she just pressed her lips to his and remembered what it had been like the last time they had done this, in his mind as the dream collapsed around them. Sparks had literally flown, and this time the sparks were only metaphorical, but definitely there. She was lost in the sensation of his warm, soft lips on hers and the tickle of the hairs of his beard on her skin, until he needed to break away to breathe.

“I love you,” said Rip. “I should have said it sooner.”

“I love you too,” said Gideon. “Can we do that again?”

Rip leaned in for another kiss, without a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading. This is the last chapter, but I'm thinking it may need a small epilogue.


End file.
